


i've learned to lose you

by peterparkr



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Okay maybe more of a happyish ending, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie) Spoilers, Time Travel, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, at least I think so, this is sometimes sad sometimes fun!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 07:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19865533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterparkr/pseuds/peterparkr
Summary: ~FAR FROM HOME SPOILERS (this starts at the mid-credit scene, so seriously stop now if you haven't seen it)~As his own face floods the large screen, Peter's second irrational instinct is that he should call Tony. Tony could fix this.





	i've learned to lose you

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote some of the middle of this story a while ago because Avengers (2012) can never be topped in my opinion and I wanted to put Peter there. Then I saw FFH and it became this! Enjoy :)

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

“Spider-Man’s real name is P-”

Peter’s whole world narrows in so that it’s just the screen in front of him, the edges of his vision start to blur.

“Spider-Man’s name is Peter Parker!”

A picture of him covers the whole screen. His heart starts thumping uncomfortably hard in his chest. This must be a dream—some terrible nightmare.

He brings his hands up to his head in shock. “What the fuck?”

Frantically, he looks down at MJ. The fear in her eyes matches the icy panic coursing through his veins. 

His first instinct is to grab her and run, but thankfully logic sets in. He can already feel people staring at him, phones are held aloft, the occasional flash going off from those who forgot to change their settings for the daytime light. They’re all watching. No one can see Spider-Man with MJ now, it will confirm his identity. And worse, put his girlfriend in more danger than she already is.

MJ must realize what he’s going to do, because she holds a hand up towards him. “Wait—”

He shoots a web and swings off before she can finish the sentence. It’s all too much. He needs to get out of here—as far away as he can.

His second irrational instinct is that he should call Tony. Tony could fix this.

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

“Sir, incoming call.”

Tony waits for the rest of the statement, for the ‘from Miss Potts’ or ‘from Colonel Rhodes’, but it never comes. Tony frowns and glances up from the projection in front of him, confused. JARVIS always says the name. At least he thinks so, maybe he’s remembering wrong or maybe he changed it. He can be a bit spacey sometimes when he really gets into a project.

“From?” he prompts.

“I don’t know, sir.”

Tony’s eyebrows knit together. That’s even odder. JARVIS is definitely supposed to filter out unknown numbers. 

“Then, why did you let it through?” 

“I don’t know, sir.”

Somehow, the AI sounds confused. Tony looks around warily, wondering if JARVIS has been compromised somehow. If his tech has been hacked, he’s a sitting duck in a fortress full of things that could soon start attacking him.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he says. “Answer the call and trace it, if you’re still listening to me.”

He waits for the call to connect, drumming his fingers on the table in front of him.

“Mr. Stark?” It’s a kid’s voice, it sounds hopeful, a little frantic.

Tony’s first thought is that it’s a fan—some kid genius who was able to hack into his systems enough to get a call through. It’s impressive, which keeps him on the phone.

“Who is this?” he asks.

There’s a long pause. Tony almost decides to just disconnect the call.

“Peter. It’s _Peter_ , Mr. Stark.” The voice is scared now.

It sounds almost like he thinks that the name should mean something to Tony. He wracks his brain for anyone with the same name, but comes up empty—he doesn’t think he knows anyone under the age of 25.

He mutes Peter's line. "Do we know a Peter?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

Something is definitely wrong with JARVIS. The kid must have messed with more than just phone call protocols. Tony takes the call off mute.

“Okay, Peter. Want to tell me how you pulled this off? Honestly, I’m impressed. Maybe I can offer you an internship or a scholarship or something. You like money, right?”

A shaky breath is taken on the other end of the call. “What year is it?”

And that just makes things go from tolerable and mildly amusing to downright annoying.

“Did your DeLorean crash? Or are you coming off a bad trip? It’s 2012,” Tony snaps. “What is this, a prank? It’s not a great one, let me tell you.

The kid, Peter, is crying now, but it sounds distant. He must be covering the receiver to try to stop Tony from hearing it.

“J? Got a location?”

“Still honing in on exact coordinates, but he’s in New York—Queens.”

All the way across the country. This whole situation is bizarre, and it says a lot that Tony thinks so. His life has always been abnormal, but in the last few years the crazy has really ramped up a few notches.

“Okay, kid, as much as I’ve loved this, I’ll be hanging up now. Bye-bye.” He hears Peter start to protest as he ends the call.

Seconds later, JARVIS announces the same number again. Tony declines it. It happens three more times (despite direct orders to block the number) until he’s angry enough to pick up. As soon as he sorts out this mess with the kid, he needs to check JARVIS’ programming to figure out why this is happening. 

“What.”

“Okay, listen, don’t hang up.” Peter’s voice isn’t wavering anymore, it sounds determined. “I can get myself to your tower, you don’t even need to pick me up, I just need access to your lab for a day, maybe two. I know I sound crazy—“

Tony hangs up the call. He is crazy, just another lunatic trying to gain access to a suit. But, another thought surfaces as well. The voice definitely belongs to a kid—or a man with a freakishly high voice, but Tony pushes aside that option for now. Someone could be using the kid to do this, he could be in danger, held at gunpoint even, to try to get some greedy sociopath into the tower. So, when Peter calls again, he answers.

“Hi, it’s Peter again.”

Tony almost laughs in spite himself. It's either that or scream in frustration. 

“So, as I was saying, I really, really need to use some of your lab equipment. I promise I won’t steal anything. I can probably get to the tower in 15 minutes. Maybe you could wait outside? So that security doesn’t throw me out or something.”

The kid has guts, Tony will give him that. Not many people would ask Tony Stark to wait outside of his own tower for them. He can’t decide if it makes Peter more suspicious or endearing.

“There are so many problems with that plan, the biggest being that I’m in Malibu right now.”

“Oh shit,” Peter says. “I forgot you lived in California.”

Tony frowns at the kid’s use of past-tense. But teenagers don’t always have the best grammar—even the genius ones who somehow hack into Stark technology.

“Okay, maybe you could give me a code or something to get into your building. Or, like, call someone to let me in?”

That’s it. The kid has no shame, absolutely none. Tony’s honestly never encountered someone who thought he was dumb enough to hand over his building's security codes to an absolute stranger over the phone. It’s insulting.

“Call your mom, kid,” he says gruffly, before hanging up.

Of course, Peter keeps calling. Tony continues telling JARVIS to block the number, but nothing stops the onslaught of incoming calls. He plays music, loud, to drown out the alerts, but his AI insists on pausing the song every few seconds to announce each new voicemail. 

“JARVIS, why are you doing this to me, buddy?”

The AI doesn't answer, just cheerfully chirps that another call is waiting.

Tony groans. He pulls up all his files on JARVIS to find the problem, but he can’t shake the nagging feeling that the boy might actually be in trouble here. He has developed slightly more of a conscious over the last few years and it’s telling him to at least make sure the kid is safe.

Tony loses count of how many alerts come through before he picks up again. This time, Peter's lost the composure that he had the last time they had talked. 

“Please, Mr. Stark, I have nowhere else to go,” Peter says desperately.

Tony sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. He can’t believe he’s going to do what he’s about to do. Developing a sort-of-conscious is a bitch. But, he’s supposed to be in New York in a week to finish the tower with Pepper, anyway. It won’t hurt too much to arrive a little early.

“I’ll get there when I get there. Don’t move, I have your coordinates.”

He hangs up before the kid finishes stammering a stream of thank you’s.

He takes a suit because it’s faster than waiting for a private jet to get ready. It’s dark by the time he arrives at the coordinates. He hovers a few hundred feet in the air above the location and has JARVIS zoom in on the ground below.

There is a boy there—Tony’s relieved that it’s not the freaky high-voiced man. He seems to have taken Tony’s instruction not to move very literally. He’s sitting on the sidewalk in a not-so-great area of New York at night, clutching a large backpack and looking absolutely miserable. With a sigh, Tony descends and lands right in front of him.

“Peter, I presume?”

The kid looks up, eyes wide, then back down. He fiddles with his hands a bit while nodding. He clears his throat a few times and when he looks back up his face is completely devoid of emotion. He stands quickly, favoring his right leg a bit. 

“Thank you so much, Mr. Stark. I’ll be out of your hair within two days.”

Tony looks the boy up and down. He’s young, early high school. His hair is sticking out in every direction, eyes red-rimmed and puffy with dark circles beneath. His clothes, a t-shirt and sweats, look wrinkled and worn out, a little bit grimy. He’s gripping his backpack like his life depends on it.

Tony has a new theory. Peter is homeless, probably an orphan or a victim of abusive parents. He’s trying to find his way off the streets through Tony. 

“Slow down, kid,” Tony says. “I didn’t say I was taking you home with me. I just wanted to check out the situation.”

He watches Peter’s face flash a combination of anger, fear, and sorrow before going back to the calm, emotionless facade. 

“I’m just asking for two days. You’re, um—“ It seems hard for him to say the next word. “I—Iron Man. If I do anything you don’t like, you can always just kick me out.”

He’s right. And it seems wrong to leave a high school kid who waited for him all day on the streets.

“Fine,” he shrugs. “One wrong move and you’re out. I’m picking you up now.”

Peter squawks in surprise as Tony lifts him up and takes off, but quickly resigns himself to hanging limp in Tony’s arms. It’s funny, most people don’t, at least not their first time around. They usually flail their limbs around or at least chatter nervously for the whole flight.

He lands on the tower’s balcony and sets the kid down. The armor gets taken off piece by piece.

When Tony looks back at Peter, he looks like he’s two seconds away from bursting into tears, his lower lip wobbles slightly. When he notices Tony’s eyes on him, he bites the lip and his face melts back into a stoic expression.

“I don’t want to watch you make a mess of my equipment tonight so you can start your little project tomorrow.” Tony’s skeptical that there even is something that the kid needs to work on. 

He points Peter in the direction of a guest room and tells him he to take a shower. Peter limps away. Tony hesitates, wondering if he should ask about it. But, it’s really none of his business. He’s already doing more than enough by letting the kid stay here.

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

As soon as Peter is out of Tony’s sight, the resolve he had used to keep up a poker face fades away. He swipes at his eyes as he makes his way towards the room.

He’s exhausted, both physically and mentally. He hadn’t been ready to see the Tony but not _Tony_ person out there. Seeing the younger version of him had given Peter some sort of emotional whiplash. There’s so much of the same man, but also many subtle differences. His words seems slightly harsher, but that could also be because he doesn’t know who Peter is. It hurts to see no recognition in the man’s eyes.

He takes a few deep breathes but it does nothing to stop the onslaught of memories. He’s been trying to avoid them.

_You didn’t think this through. Don’t pretend you thought this through._

Tony had been wrong about that before. Peter had made the decision to stay on the flying space donut and even to this day he doesn’t exactly regret it. But the words ring true now. Peter brings his hands up to his hair and tugs slightly in frustration. He can’t believe how much he’s screwed up in the last year.

He couldn’t stop Tony’s death, he gave Beck EDITH, the world found out his secret identity, and then he decides that the best solution is to go back in time and talk to Tony.

It was a stupid plan, even stupider because he obviously didn’t make his version of Tony’s device right. He’s five years earlier than he wanted to be—and he had materialized so high up. The fall had hurt.

He’s trying to keep the tears to a minimum, but he can feel violent sobs and panic threatening to rise up his throat. He swallows them down and tries to focus on what he can fix in this moment. He strips off the the sweatpants that he had found in a dumpster (poor planning, he didn’t bring money because he thought he’d have Tony) near where he had landed. 

He’s trying to conserve web fluid (poor planning again), so he’d wadded up a bunch of paper towels from a public bathroom to stop the blood flow from the cut.

He peels off the soaked paper towels, wincing, and throws them into the wastebasket at the side of the bed. It’s hard for him to see the wound clearly because it’s on his calf. He has to twist his leg in a painful way to get a good look. From what he can see, it’s deeper than he initially thought. He’s not even sure what he hit as he fell, something sharp must have been sticking out from a building.

He hops in the shower and tries to clean out the cut. There’s a lot of gunk in it, dirt and tiny flecks of paper towels.

His head is light and spinning by the time he turns the water off. Sleep would be the best decision. It would help in accelerating the healing. But, his mind won’t quiet, hampered with anxiety. He needs to find real bandages. He needs to think. He needs to plan.

There are some clothes in the guest room that Peter assumes are Pepper’s. He shivers a little as he sifts through the items. The weather outside was warm, but Tony has the air conditioning set low. He finds a large sweatshirt with an MIT emblem that must actually be Tony’s, stolen by Pepper at some point. He pulls on pink and white striped pajama pants that fit surprisingly well. He huffs out an approximation of a laugh. Tony would get a kick out of them—especially the fact that Pepper and him are nearly the same size.

He carefully rolls the right leg up so that blood won’t mark them and then limps out of the room to look for what he needs.

In the penthouse, he finds a roll of gauze that will suffice as bandages for now. He also finds a pad of paper with Pepper’s handwriting on it. It’s a to-do list. He rips off the used page and starts his own on the next. 

The device was damaged. When Peter recovered enough from his fall, he realized that it was sparking and hissing a bit. With his luck, he's surprised that it didn't start a fire.

_1) fix time travel device_

It’s not an easy task, but Peter thinks it’s more doable than the next one. The fall had shattered the vials of Pym particles that he had. It was the one thing he had actually planned sufficiently for. It had been easy to get them from Scott Lang. He likes Peter, thinks they’re bug buddies, and Peter supposes that they are. He’d felt bad tricking the man into giving him the vials for 'science reasons'. Scott was too trusting—just as Peter had been with Beck. He didn’t want to have to do that to someone, but it had felt like the only option. He wasn’t thinking straight—his face was being blasted on every major news network. He brought five vials—thought that was being over-cautious—and folded bubble wrap around them. But the precautions hadn’t mattered, he’d landed right on them. All that’s left are some drops stuck in the bottom of one of the pieces of shattered glass.

_2) replicate Pym particles_

It’s only two things, but both items were originally created by geniuses. Peter’s definitely screwed.

He hesitantly adds another item to the list.

_3) Ben is alive here_

He stares at it. It’s not exactly an instruction, just a statement of fact. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

The kid is up before Tony is. His heart falters when he notices the figure huddled on a couch in the penthouse. It’s honestly creepy, his eyes are hazy as if he’s not really there.

“Nearly gave me a heart attack,” Tony mutters.

Peter seems to shudder to life, his posture straightening and eyes clearing up. But he still looks half-dead, like he could fall over at any minute.

Tony raises an eyebrow at the outfit. So he’d raided the clothes that Pepper had stored in the guest room. Interesting—but fair enough. Tony would rather he put on something clean than the dirty clothes he had been wearing. He decides not to comment on it.

Tony pours himself a bowl of cereal. He munches on it and notices the kid watching him. Something in his mind clicks.

“Oh my god, I didn’t feed you.” It sounds like he’s talking about a dog.

He drifts over to the pantry. It’s pretty empty.

“Your choices are cereal, or cereal,” he jokes.

It wins him a small smirk. Nice to know that the kid has other expressions besides none whatsoever and on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“Or you could make a green smoothie.”

Peter scrunches his nose in disgust.

The boy scarfs down one bowl with a fervor that Tony has never seen before. He slides the box back towards him. Peter hesitantly pours another bowl and eats it just as fast. It seems unhealthy. Tony knows that people aren’t supposed to go from starving to stuffing themselves, he’d made that mistake after Afghanistan. He doesn’t know when the kid’s last meal before this was.

He leaves the box of cereal out anyway.

Peter’s limp is less pronounced than the night before as Tony leads him to the labs. He’s reassured by it. He doesn’t know why he cares.

“This is it then,” Tony gestures around the lab.

He’s fully prepared to give the kid a crash course, then watch him try and fail to use the lab’s resources. Instead, Peter scuttles over to a workbench, still holding the giant backpack. He takes something out of it. Tony strains to see what it is, but the boy obscures his view. His heart speeds up a little, it could be a gun, a bomb.

“Did you give me access to FRI—JARVIS?” Peter asks.

Tony blinks. Peter bites his lip and looks anywhere except at him.

“I need him to use some of this stuff, right?”

Tony nods. The kid knows more than he thought—about a lot of things it would seem. He’s already started picking up some tools that are lying around as well.

“JARVIS, do what he says, unless he’s about to blow himself up or some shit.”

Tony walks quickly around to the other side of the bench. Peter tries to use his hands to obscure the object from his view, but it’s not effective.

He narrows his eyes at the object. It looks almost like a bracelet, a heavy duty bracelet. Tony’s relieved that it’s not a bomb, but he can think of about a thousand ways to rig a bracelet into a weapon. Peter seems almost competent enough to do so.

Tony can’t sit here and watch the kid all day, so he leaves, telling JARVIS to keep an eye on him. He hesitates at the door.

“You have a last name, Peter? Or have they stopped giving those out?”

The boy’s hands freeze. “Um, yes, last name—Leeds?”

Well that’s a lie. Tony looks it up anyway. There is a Leeds family near Queens, no Peter listed. The boy is also decidedly not any Peter Leeds that Tony manages to track down images of. Even facial recognition yields no results. Tony tells himself that it’s not that surprising. The name is obviously fake and if the kid truly is homeless, there’s probably not much of a record that he exists. But, he can’t quite escape the feeling that he’s missing something.

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

Peter’s running on fumes. His thoughts are muddled which isn’t helping him in the lab. He can’t sleep because he needs to fix this before Tony kicks him out. He can’t figure out what's wrong with the device because he doesn’t have Tony’s notes and his sleep-deprived brain can’t produce coherent thoughts. It’s a vicious cycle of exhaustion and disappointment. He doesn’t have the energy to be a person; he’s reverted to a base system. His brain is a program stuck in a loop, executing the same commands over and over.

__

Try to fix the device—failed!  
Error: still sparking when powered on  
Reapply bandages to cut—success!  
Message: healing at his normal speed  
Replicate Pym particles—failed!  
Error: no idea where to start  
Try to sleep—failed!  
Error: nightmares, need to keep working  
Prevent mental breakdown—success!  
Message: avoided Tony  
Get food—failed!  
Error: Tony ran out of cereal

On the third day, ‘reapply bandages’ fails to execute. He takes off the gauze he’d put on the night before and the wound is surrounded by red and hot to the touch. 

He closes his eyes and tries to calm his breathing so that ‘prevent mental breakdown’ doesn’t fail as well.

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

Peter stays longer than his allotted two days. Tony can’t seem to bring himself to kick him out. He’s not doing anything harmful, and Tony’s curious to see the finished product.

Except, he’s not sure if there will be one. It’s been five days since Tony picked the kid up and he feels like he’s watching him fall apart.

The bags under Peter’s eyes seem to have grown rather than shrunk—JARVIS says that he spends almost whole nights in the lab, only occasionally dozing with his head on the table. He apologizes profusely to Tony on the few occasions that they do cross pathes.

“Just one more day, Mr. Stark, I’m so sorry, so sorry. I’ll be gone soon, don’t worry.” He seems panicked, a bit manic.

The limp had become more prominent again after day three. JARVIS played Tony clips of Peter struggling to move around the lab. Tony had watched with concern before he reminded himself that he didn’t care.

Tony’s looking over some of his calculations for converting the building to full arc reactor power when there’s a knock on his bedroom door. Peter is standing outside of it sheepishly.

“Sorry to bother you, but do you have any neosporin?”

Tony gives him a skeptical look. “Do I look like I have a baby?”

“It’s an antibiotic cream,” Peter says, but he sounds slightly unsure of himself.

“For babies,” Tony sniffs.

Peter looks so tired. It reminds Tony a little bit of how Rhodey and Pepper look at him sometimes, when they’re over putting up with his BS. The kid even has the audacity to squint his eyes at Tony in annoyance.

“Do you have the grown-up version then?” he deadpans.

Tony should have kicked the boy out days ago. “Why do you need it?”

Peter thinks for a minute, like he’s deciding how much to reveal. “I have a, um, cut.”

Tony’s gaze drifts down to Peter’s leg. No way this kid is asking him for something if it’s a minor cut. Peter hadn’t even asked him for food when the cereal had run out a few days ago. In fact, he seems to be trying to avoid Tony at all costs.

“Let me see it.”

Peter starts backing out of the room, shaking his head. Tony follows him, noting Peter’s strained face every time he places weight on his right leg. He’s clearly trying not to limp as much in front of Tony.

Tony puts his arms on the boy’s shoulders, ignoring his flinch, and steers him towards the couch. He gives Peter his best stern expression, hopes it conveys that he will wait as long as he has to.

Peter holds the eye contact for a few minutes before giving up. He sighs, and rolls up his pant leg. Gauze covers almost the whole lower half of his leg. Tony vaguely wonders if Peter found it somewhere in the tower or if it was one of the items in his bag.

Peter gingerly rips off the bandages, wincing slightly.

And that—that is not a cut. Tony would call it more of a giant gash, a calf sliced in half. He wouldn’t be surprised if the muscle has been torn by it. It oozes pus. The kid’s tough, it’s surprising that he has managed to walk around on it for so many days.

Tony whistles. “That’s going to need more than neosporin.”

“Oh, I don’t know Mr. Stark. I heal fast,” Peter says vaguely. “But I think it’s infected.”

“Oh, really? You think? I never would have guessed.” He pauses long enough for Peter to look sufficiently embarrassed. “How did this even happen?”

The one thing that Tony knows for sure about Peter is that he’s not great at thinking up lies on the spot. Tony can practically see his mind racing for what to say.

“Um, I landed—er, I mean tripped on something sharp?”

Tony stops poking at Peter's leg to shoot him a look of disbelief. “On what? A rusty metal spike? A razor blade?”

Peter just averts his eyes. His face is completely closed off again.

Tony gets up without a word. There’s got to be a first aid kit somewhere in this tower. Pepper thinks of those sorts of things. He finds one in a different lab than the one he set Peter up in. He brings it back and starts cleaning out the wound.

Peter tries to grab the supplies from him. “I can do it, Mr. Stark.”

Tony just swats his hands away and continues. He can’t have a child dying from an untreated infection in his own building. It would be a whole thing to sort out.

Peter sighs, leans back and screws his eyes shut. Tony would never admit it out loud, barely even to himself, but he’s worried about the kid. Shivers run through his body every so often as Tony works; he probably has a fever due to the infection. He clearly doesn’t have a home or the means to take care of himself. And then there’s the lack of sleep and the obsession with the little bracelet. There’s something really off. Tony’s definitely out of his element.

The gash is just as deep as it had looked upon first glance. The kid flinches a little every time that Tony prods at it.

“You should probably have someone stitch this up.”

Peter shakes his head adamantly. “I’m good.”

“I’d pay for it,” Tony offers. He has enough money after all.

Peter bristles. “I’m not here for your money.” He says it desperately, like he’s trying to make Tony understand something.

“You could have fooled me. You’ve been using my equipment—worth millions, by the way—for days.” 

It’s just an observation, but it comes out harsher than he meant it to sound. Something like hurt flashes in Peter’s eyes. Neither of them speak again as Tony finishes smoothing the bandages over the leg. As soon as Tony removes his hands, Peter gets up and hobbles out of the room, waiting at the door.

“Just two more days, please.” 

Tony nods and Peter leaves. He feels like he kicked a damn puppy. He scoops up the antiseptic cream and some bandages and places them on the floor outside the room Peter has been staying in.

The two days pass. Tony hasn’t seen Peter in person at all throughout them. An extra cereal bowl shows up in the dishwasher every once in a while so he knows that Peter’s eating some and JARVIS shows him footage of the lab occasionally, but those are the only signs that Tony even has a guest.

He’s trying to figure out a tactful way to ask the kid to leave. If he can’t, he’ll settle for a harsher one. Peter can’t stay forever. Pepper will be here soon and he doesn’t want to have to explain this to her. 

“Boss, there’s a situation in the lab.”

Tony sits up straighter. “What happened?”

“Our guest appears to be very agitated.”

Tony heads down quickly, taking steps two at a time. The first thing he notices is that one of his work tables is severely dented. The tools and materials that had been on it are strewn about the lab as if there had been an explosion. But, thankfully, that can't be the case because nothing looks charred or burnt. The second is that Peter is sobbing, chest heaving, body shaking, the whole deal.

“Are you hurt?” Tony asks.

Peter freezes. A few seconds pass before he turns around and faces Tony. He looks wrecked. JARVIS said that he hasn’t slept, not even just a quick nap in the lab, for over 72 hours. That’s a long time, even by Tony’s standards.

“No, sorry, sorry.” Peter swipes at the tears but it does nothing to quell them. “Mr. Stark—I don’t know what to do.”

And this is just so far from what Tony thought he had signed up for when he picked up this kid. He never should have answered the phone that day, never should have flown to the city. Because now, this boy is looking at him for comfort and Tony is so far from being equipped to deal with that. Hell, he doesn’t want to be equipped for that.

He just stares from the door of the lab while the kid sniffles and looks at him with gleaming, trusting eyes. Tony doesn't know when he gained that trust, and he doesn't necessarily want it. Peter keeps taking large breaths like he’s trying to calm himself. It’s making Tony uncomfortable. He takes one step backwards, and then another. Maybe he can just leave the kid to it, come back when JARVIS says he has calmed down.

“I don’t know how to fix it, I’ve tried everything I can think of. I must have fried it really bad.”

Tony stops his retreat from the room. That sounds like something he might actually be able to help with. He’s an engineer, a genius, and he will do anything to stop the breakdown occurring in front of him (as long as it doesn't include addressing any emotional problems). Then the kid will leave and Tony can go back to his admittedly abnormal life.

“I can fix anything,” he says. “What’s your bracelet supposed to do?”

Peter studies him thoughtfully, takes a few more breathes. “You’re going to think I’m insane.”

Tony’s just glad that his words have seemed to stem the tears a bit. He waves his hand impatiently for Peter to continue.

“I don’t even know if I can tell you, the universe might implode or something.” The kid says it sincerely, like he actually believes it.

“Just spit it out. I don’t have all day.”

Peter runs a shaky hand through his hair. “Okay, but you’ve got to promise you’ll believe me. Or at least hear me out.”

Tony’s quickly losing his patience. He’s about five seconds away from showing Peter to the door. He tells him as much.

“It’s a device to travel through time,” Peter mumbles

Tony can’t have heard that right. “Come again?”

Peter repeats it and Tony feels all of the concern he had felt on the boy's behalf subside. Rage bubbles up to replace it. This whole thing has been an elaborate prank after all.

“You’re trying to tell me your bracelet is a time machine? Really? That’s the best you could come up with. Who put you up to this?”

Peter looks frustrated, new tears are springing to his eyes. “You said you’d believe me.”

Tony wants to point out that he never did say that, but decides that it’s not worth it. He spins on his heels and walks out of the room instead. 

“Pack your bags—well, bag, singular, I guess,” Tony says flippantly. “Don’t make me use a suit.”

Tony’s heart gives a slight twist at Peter’s expression against his will. All of the trust that had been there minutes before is gone. He's looking at Tony like he'd just signed the order for Peter's death.

“Look, kid, I can give you some cash to help you out. But, you can’t stay here.” 

The boy is practically trembling. “Mr. Stark, please, _please_. I’m from the future. I could—I could prove it somehow. Let me think.”

Tony shakes his head, tries to walk away from the kid again. Peter follows him, rambling desperately. Tony refuses to look back. He doesn’t want to give any indication that the antics might be wearing him down.

“It’s 2012 right? Okay 2012. God, I don’t even know what month—has the Battle Of New York happened yet?”

That makes Tony pause, but he quickly shakes himself. The kid’s out of options. He’ll say anything to try to get Tony to let him stay here. It’s not even a creative name for a make-believe battle. 

“I’ll take that as a no. Okay so there are aliens. I don’t know if you know that yet. I didn’t in 2012, but I was pretty young and you’re, well, you. Wow, I’m going against every movie I’ve ever watched by telling you anything. Um, the Avengers form, Loki—“

Tony’s blood runs cold. “How do you know about the Avengers Initiative? Is Fury behind this, then?”

“No!” Peter shouts. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m from the future! If you would just listen—“

“I’m putting on a suit. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be gone before I get back.” 

The tear-tracks lining Peter’s face are pretty devastating. Tony does his best to ignore them.

Peter storms into the kitchen and piles a few boxes of cereal into his backpack. All Tony can do is watch in shock, because apparently his life has now become some strange homeless boy robbing him of his breakfast.

“I’ll be around,” he says vaguely, walking towards the door. “When you realize I’m telling the truth, please call me or something.”

The door slams shut. Tony lets out a sigh of relief. Thank god that’s over.

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

Peter has nowhere to go. Something about that slightly dire fact allows him to stop panicking. His mind becomes a little clearer because it has to.

All he wants is to go to his old apartment, have May there to comfort him and make him some of her awful chicken noodle soup. And Ben would be there. He misses him so much, everyday, and right now he’s alive and in reach.

But, Peter can’t go there. They might not even recognize him. Or worse, they would and then they would freak out before he could explain. If he did explain they probably wouldn’t believe him, just like Tony.

His next best option is to stay close. He can’t get back to the present without Tony—or at least prolonged access to Tony’s lab. The Battle Of New York must be soon. It happens on May 4th, the date was drilled into his head in his AP US History class. Peter hadn’t bothered to figure out what month it is currently, but based on the warm weather it has to be at least April. He can make it on his own for a few weeks if he needs to.

He scales Stark tower and sets up base at the very top. He takes out the notebook he grabbed from the penthouse and flips to a new page, quickly jots down a list of things he needs to survive and where he could get them. He can sneak into the tower and siphon food and water from Tony. He feels a little bad about, but the man’s a billionaire. He can spare a few more boxes of cereal than the ones that Peter already took.

He slips into his suit because it seems like the right thing to do. He’s alone up here, out of his time, no one knows where he is. The suit offers some protection. The stolen MIT sweatshirt works as a makeshift pillow. Peter bunches it up on the ground and lays down. He pulls out the time travel device and holds it up above him, twirling it around beneath the backdrop of the sky. He lowers it and clutches it to his chest, willing it to just _work_. His eyelids are so heavy; they start to droop.

They’re startled back open by the sound of repulsors. He watches the Iron Man suit take off from the balcony below and instinctively tries to plaster himself as low to the ground as possible. He wishes he’d brought the new stealth-suit that Fury gave him.

It doesn’t matter in the end, because Tony’s gone, flying into the night.

Peter frowns, conflicted between following Tony and staying at the tower. The battle happens in New York, Tony will have to come back here eventually. He stays put.

The tower goes dark, which sends tendrils of dread through Peter. A powerless tower would dampen his plans to live off of it. But, just as suddenly, it flickers back to life.

When the suit returns, Peter breathes a sigh of relief. Tony a few floors below him is a safety net in case something goes really wrong. He wouldn’t have wanted to stay up here for a long time without knowing that the man was below.

Peter hasn’t caught a break since he got bit by the spider, so he’s not surprised when the back of his neck starts to itch. It doesn’t feel like danger, though, which is a blessing. He sits up slowly and glances over the side of the building to see a blacked-out vehicle pull up at the front of the tower. A man gets out and walks towards the entrance. 

The situation has SHIELD written all over it. Peter sticks upside down on the side of the building so he can peak into the penthouse. His hearing is good enough so that he should be able to catch any conversation that occurs inside.

Watching Pepper and Tony together causes a deep ache throughout his body—a combination of guilt and misery. Pepper lost Tony far too soon.

Peter ignores the prickling behind his eyes and focuses on the conversation. It’s definitely about bringing the team together, a stroke of good fortune, for once. The Battle will happen soon and Tony will know that he’s telling the truth. Then, Peter can get out of here. 

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

When Coulson shows up, Tony tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. It doesn’t mean that Peter was telling the truth. Things happen, it was only a matter of time before the world experienced a threat.

When he sees ‘Loki’ in the files, his heart stops. He replays the footage of Peter saying the name over and over in disbelief. Tony’s not an idiot. There are only a handful of ways the kid could have known the man who was going to threaten the earth. Either Peter has access to Shield’s intel and they’ve known about the threat for longer than they’ve been saying or he’s on Loki’s side. A third explanation itches at the back of his mind. 

_I’m trying to tell you that I’m from the future._

For now, Tony pushes his questions about the boy aside. He has bigger problems to deal with.

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

When the SHIELD agent leaves with Pepper, Peter follows. The decision is quick, maybe even rash. He shoves his belongings into his backpack and scurries down the side of the tower. He tries to web along behind the car as discreetly as possible. Heroes weren’t as common yet back in 2012, especially not a kid with webs.

When the car hits the interstate, Peter hops from semi to semi, the odd car if he has to (but people notice that which isn’t great), to keep up with the vehicle. Phil drops Pepper at LaGuardia, like he said he would, and then turns the car back towards Manhattan. 

Peter groans but follows.

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

On the flight back from Germany, Tony has JARVIS pull up Peter’s number. The ‘Loki’ character that he had referenced a few days ago now sits just feet away from him. Tony doesn’t know what side Peter is on, but he does know that the boy could have important information. 

Lightning strikes and he forgets all about it.

The so-called team is a nightmare. Their personalities are all too large to relinquish any control in order to work together. Some of their ideals clash and their goals differ.

It doesn’t matter because the ship is hit. As he and the Captain rush towards the broken engine, Tony realizes that maybe teams don’t always form because they should logically work. Maybe they form because there's no other choice.

He assesses the damage on the aircraft, tells Cap what he needs to do, and gets to work. Just as he’s about to start pushing the propeller, he hears a voice.

“Hey, Mr. Stark, need any help?”

Tony looks up so fast that his suit whirs in protest. That’s the kid’s voice, but it’s not his face that comes into Tony’s view. Instead, there’s a red mask, with big eyes. He’s hanging upside down, holding onto a line of some kind.

“Who is that, Stark? Is he hostile?” Cap asks.

Tony gives bug-eyes a pointed look. “I don’t know.”

“Hey! Wait, you remember me, right? I’m Peter, from the tower? I’m one of the good guys!”

“Then get over there and make sure the old man pulls the right lever.”

The mask zips out of Tony’s view and he tunes out anything else that Cap and Peter might be talking about. Working out who Peter actually is and why his suit looks suspiciously like something Tony would make can wait until later.

They save the ship but lose a man. 

“And will somebody please explain to me who this boy is and how he got on board?” Fury demands after he’s finished waving around Phil’s trading cards. 

Peter grimaces, looks to Tony for help. Tony refuses to acknowledge him. He doesn’t know who the kid is or why he seems to be following him around.

“Stark knows him,” Steve says.

Tony rolls his eyes as Fury fixes him with a glare. He opens his mouth to say that actually he has no idea who the kid is, but something about Peter’s wide-eyed expression changes his mind.

“This is Peter,” he says, instead, shrugging. “Maybe he’ll come in handy.”

Peter's posture relaxes. He smiles, wide and bright, so different than anything that came over his face at the tower. Tony doesn’t return it.

Once Fury’s finished interrogating Peter on his abilities, Tony drags the kid from the room. 

“Okay, Bug Boy,” Tony says, gripping the front of Peter’s suit. “Tell me who you really are.”

Peter doesn’t seem fazed by Tony’s aggressive demeanor. “It’s Spider-Man, I literally just told everyone in there. I know you heard it.”

Tony loosens his grip to rub his forehead. This is why he doesn’t know any teenagers and he never wants to know any teenagers.

“Tell me who you are, the whole truth, or you’re out.”

Peter’s face twists into a pained expression. “I told you, I’m from the future.”

Tony wants to interrupt, start yelling at the kid, but he bites his tongue. There’s a small part of him that might be willing to believe it if the story makes sense. That part keeps him in check for now.

“I’m Peter, um, Parker not Leeds, sorry. That’s my best friend’s name because I knew you would look me up and I’m, like, ten right now,” He looks at Tony cautiously, trying to gauge if he believes him. “I got bit by a genetically engineered spider and it messed with my DNA. Um, I became an Avenger, I guess. A lot of stuff happened. You created time travel! You’re the one who figured it out and everything. And I, well, I needed to go back in time, but no one would let me. So I used your notes to make my own device but I must have fucked it up somehow because it didn’t take me to the coordinates I put in. It dropped me too far back and, like, really high in the air.”

Tony looks down at Peter’s leg without thinking. Hitting something sharp as he was falling a large distance could create that cut. He still has so many questions, though.

“Why did you need to go back in time?” 

The guards go up on Peter’s face again, like they had been back at the tower.

“I need something. But it’s not, uh, not ready yet,” he says, eyes darting from the floor to the ceiling, but never landing on Tony. 

It’s so vague. Tony raises an eyebrow skeptically, but decides not to press it. The kid’s entitled to some secrets.

“You any good?” he asks instead. “In a fight, I mean.”

Peter smirks. “I would hope so, you recruited me.”

Tony’s eyes widen. He didn’t see himself as someone who would be recruiting anyone—let alone a child for Fury’s little team. 

It also explains a lot about the kid. He probably mistook the recruitment process for something like a friendship, mentor-ship or something. It explains his familiarity with Tony and Stark tech. At least this means he’ll be helpful, Tony trusts himself to know potential at least.

“Good. We’re going to need all the help we can get. And you already know what happens.”

“I wouldn’t say I know what happens. All I remember is trying to get out of the city, and then the footage afterwards.”

The kid _is_ good. Tony can’t help but keep an eye on him as he swings around the city, weaving webs that trap the chittauri. 

“Try to destroy as much of their tech as you can, don’t just disable it,” Peter says at one point.

“We’re just trying to scrap our way out of this, disabling it might be as good as it gets,” Steve replies.

“Why?” Tony asks. He’s slowly starting to believe the time-traveler thing. If this could cost them the fight he needs to know.

“Um, it might become a problem in the future. Criminals might get their hands on it and stuff. Not that big of a deal.”

Tony notes it, tries to destroy as much as he can. He hopes that the rest of the team does the same, for whatever future event Peter is trying to prevent. 

The team is actually working. If it weren’t so chaotic, and lives weren’t at stake, it would be breathtaking. Cap boosts Natasha onto one of the alien vehicles, Clint’s arrows hit a target, the Hulk smashes two aliens together, Peter flips through the sky.

Then, Fury tells him about the nuke. He’s holding it. He’s in space. There are so many ships. The universe is infinite and the earth is so impossibly outmatched.

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

Peter feels guilty even thinking it, but the Battle Of New York is fun.

Logically, he knows that a lot of people lose their lives today, which is the opposite of fun. But it’s kind of like going back and being a part of the Revolutionary War, knowing the outcome, and getting to play a part in one of history’s greatest events.

The stakes also feel so low. Peter knows that the Avengers win. But, even if he didn’t, defending New York from a few aliens lead by Loki is nothing compared to trying to take out a man with all six infinity stones, hell bent on wiping out half the universe. 

The Avengers, of course, don’t feel so lightly about the incident. They’re stressed, fully believing that their world is about to come crashing down around them. Peter feels—old, wise. It’s weird. He understands how adults look at children when they experience their first heartbreak or loss. There’s so much worse yet to come. This is nothing.

But then, Tony mentions the nuke. He plasters himself to the side of a building to catch his breath. It’s fine, he reminds himself, it’s what happens. Tony risks it all and totally saves the day, but he lives. Peter’s seen the footage. He’d taped news articles about it to his wall after the fact. 

The reassurances don’t stop the fears from raging through his mind. Peter’s here now, which makes this time different from before. It seems inconsequential, but in any movie with time-travel, the thing that fucks everything up the most always seems unimportant.

“Stark, you know that’s a one-way trip.”

Steve’s voice sends chills up Peter’s spine. He can’t breathe.

“Mr. Stark,” he chokes out. “B-be careful.”

Tony doesn’t answer.

Peter sees Steve and Thor on the ground and leaps over to them. He can’t stop fidgeting and chattering nervously at them. They ignore him completely—all turn their heads to track the Iron Man suit shooting up the side of the tower with the missile on it’s back.

Tony’s in there. 

“He’s going to be okay,” Peter says.

Steve spares him a sad glance before staring back at the wormhole. Tony’s taking longer than Peter thought he would to reemerge, he starts tapping his foot impatiently.

Steve tells Nat to close the portal. Peter spins towards him.

“Why would you do that?” He shoves Steve’s shoulder a little bit. “He’s still up there! What are you doing?”

Steve doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head and moves slightly out of Peter’s reach. Anger rises fast—Steve just sent an order to effectively trap Tony in space.

Before he can do anything about it, Thor speaks. “Stark knew what he was doing. He was a brave man.”

Peter’s chest feels so tight, each breath is taking tremendous effort, he can’t seem to get enough air. He knows that his inhales are loud and shaky. Steve and Thor are looking at him, then they glance at each other, clearly uncomfortable, but he doesn’t care. The portal is closing.

Just as Peter’s about to give up all hope completely, a human-shaped figure slips out of space. 

“Son of a gun.”

“He’s not slowing down.” 

Tony’s falling, fast. Peter needs to do something. He doesn’t know what to do.

The Hulk does. He comes out of nowhere and grabs Tony’s falling body, throws it to the side.

A wobbling grin stretches over Peter’s face. He’d been worrying for nothing. Of course Tony is fine, this has happened before. He follows Steve and Thor over to the suit. Thor throws the faceplate off.

And Tony’s not moving or breathing. The arc reactor isn’t even glowing. Tony needs that to live at this point. Something’s wrong, very wrong. Peter’s chest starts to seize up again. He can’t watch Tony die, not again.

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

_Is this what happened last time?_

_What are you talking about? Son, you need to calm down._

_This can’t be right. Oh my god, I caused this oh my god, no, Mr. Stark, please, please, PLEASE._

The Hulk roars. Tony’s awake.

“No, Tony, Tony, Tony, no.” The kid is sobbing, Steve awkwardly patting him on the back.

Tony ignores that, makes some jokes, says something about shawarma. Peter shoots over to him, he’s still crying uncontrollably. His whole body shudders with it. 

“We’re not finished,” Thor says, eyeing Stark Tower.

“Then, shawarma?” Tony jokes.

The damn kid won’t stop his freak-out session. Steve helps Tony to his feet and Peter comes up with him, clings on to Tony’s armor as if it’s the only thing keeping him alive. Tony wants to shake him off. Then, he realizes there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. He moves his arm up and down a bit, but Peter doesn’t budge. He takes his other hand and tries to pry him off. The kid sticks like glue.

The other Avengers are watching the whole thing with something like judgement. Tony’s not sure if it’s for him or Peter. Probably both. 

“You guys head up, I’ll be there once I get the leech off.”

He expects the comment to offend Peter into unsticking. If anything, he grips on tighter. 

“Is he a son of Stark?” Tony hears Thor ask as they head towards the tower.

Tony blanches, because no, obviously not, but also what really does Tony know.

“Are you mine? Biologically?”

That seems to shock Peter back to life. “No, no.”

“Then, do you want to tell me what’s going on right now? Because I thought you said you were an Avenger.”

That makes the kid cry harder, but he nods mechanically. He’s still not letting go.

“Well, that implies that you’ve been in battles before—that you can handle a battle like this. And if I’m not mistaken, I’m the one who just flew a fucking nuke into outer space, Parker. So if anyone should be flipping out right now, it should be me!” 

Tony means it as a joke, but his voice comes out high-pitched and breathy at the end. Okay, so maybe he is also losing it a bit.

“Why do you do that? Why do you always sacrifice yourself?”

The always is what does it. Nobody ever pegs Tony as one to sacrifice himself. In fact, people say the complete opposite, most recently Steve Rogers. He thinks back on the kid’s behavior since he arrived here. The almost tears when Tony took off his mask that first night at the tower, the contradiction between avoidance and following, the half answered questions.

“So I’m what’s not ready yet.” It stings a little bit. 

Peter’s eyes shine up at him. “I didn’t mean it like that. I need help. And you don’t even know me yet, Tony.”

The kid won’t stop shaking, the only part of him that holds firm are his sticky hands. Tony takes off for the tower without a word. Peter clings.

They deal with Loki. Tony doesn’t look at Peter, a difficult feat when he's literally attached to his armor. They find a shawarma joint where Peter finally unsticks. He eats a few bites and then rests his head on the table.

Tony almost reaches out to rub his back, an instinct that shocks him. Instead, he reaches for another piece of food.

Natasha reaches over the table and places a hand on Peter’s shoulder. Today has been full of surprises, he hadn't seen her as the type. 

“You did great out there,” she says.

Peter lifts his head and gives her a tight smile.

Rogers seems to think that they’re close enough to do silent conversations now. He catches Tony’s eyes, looks at the boy, and then back at Tony.

Tony interprets it as _what’s up with that guy?_ so he just shrugs.

They go their separate ways. Tony brings Bruce back to show him the tower and Peter comes as well. Peter dashes toward his guest room as soon as they arrive at the floor.

“So, who is he then?” Bruce asks.

Tony shakes his head. “It’s a long story. I don’t think he’s even telling me the whole thing.”

“He’s young. Seemed pretty shaken up by the whole thing. Rogers said he was losing it when you flew the nuke up there.”

Tony stiffens at the reference to the wormhole. He gulps back the white-hot fear that it causes.

“I’ll talk to him.” It’s meant to placate Bruce and it does. Tony doesn’t think he’ll actually follow through on it.

Tony has never been one to get much sleep. It’s not a priority for him, his mind is constantly innovating and creating. Sleep just dampers the process. It got worse after Afghanistan, and now the dreams have increased twofold. He doesn’t even try much anymore, just works on suits. It gives him a sense of control; if he can make the best suit he has the best chance of protecting the world.

JARVIS tells him that Peter has nightmares too. The boy paces his room every night, in the same pattern, over and over. Then around 3 AM, almost like clockwork, Peter goes into the lab adjacent to the one Tony occupies and starts tinkering with his device. They haven’t been in the same room since they got to the tower, haven’t spoken a word.

Tony thinks about time travel though, when he’s not busy coming up with new suit ideas. He doesn’t know how his future self might have done it, it seems as impossible as ever. He tentatively has JARVIS test a few things but nothing pans out.

The routine changes after about two weeks. JARVIS alerts Tony that Peter left his room at the usual time, but a few minutes later, the door of the lab that Tony is in opens. He glances up as Peter makes his way towards him. 

“Look, I know you don’t like having me here,” Peter starts. “I’m never going to be able to leave if you don’t help me. I don’t know how to fix it. I’m really trying.”

Tony doesn’t want to admit that he’s been trying too. He already knows that he’s not the man that Peter wants him to be. He’s not yet the guy that Peter’s dreams are undoubtedly about. If Tony’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t think he ever could be the type of man that has this teenager looking up to him. The one thing he thought he could live up to was the brain. His brain should be the same, but he hasn’t been able to crack this. 

“Do you have the notes—er, my notes—that you used to make it?” Tony asks.

Peter looks like he’s going to cry again. “No, I’m so stupid. I don’t know why I didn’t bring them.”

“Calm down. Can you explain them to me, what you remember at least?”

Peter does. 

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

They start to work together. It’s good because all Peter’s wanted since Tony died is to be around his mentor again. It’s bad because this isn’t the same guy, not exactly. It makes Peter sad more often than not, but he also needs Tony’s help. And Tony remembers to order actual food for Peter since they’re usually in the lab together now. The pros outweigh the cons. 

Tony keeps telling him to repeat everything he remembers about the notes. He says it’s because it'll help Peter remember more. Peter thinks it’s actually because Tony’s used to having his AI repeat things out loud while he works.

Peter’s going through it for the fifth or maybe sixth time of the day when Tony’s face lights up.

“That’s it!” He’s child-like in his delight. “Well, not _it_ , it, but I think I’m getting somewhere.”

He tells JARVIS to change a few things to the design and runs analytics. The change fixes a few of the problems they had been facing. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s progress. Hope blooms in Peter’s chest.

“Just like that,” Tony says, holding his hand up and snapping it on the last word. “We’re really getting somewhere now.”

The hope is quickly replaced by something more sinister. The snap seems to reverberate through him. Flashes of the battle after the blip surface in his vision. He blinks rapidly to try to stop them.

“Woah, you’re not keeling over on me, are you?”

Peter leans heavily on the table, he feels light-headed. It takes tremendous effort to shake his head.

Tony’s lip twists in knowing way. “Are you ever going to tell me what happens? I’m curious. I must have a really big hero moment if you’re this cut up about it.”

“Yeah—big hero—moment.” Peter tries to match Tony’s blasé tone, but his voice comes out even shakier than he feels.

“Seriously, you seem pretty traumatized. I’ve been told it helps to talk about shit.” His grin is wolffish. “Not that I’ve ever taken that advice.”

“‘M not traumatized.” Peter sets his jaw, determined.

Tony squints a little bit, cocks his head to the side. “Oh, yeah? Prove it. Tell me what happened. Or—happens, I guess.”

Peter doesn’t know if he can do that. Or if he _should_ do that. He knows that this past won’t affect his own future, but he doesn’t know what happens to this timeline after he’s gone. He hasn’t messed with any infinity stones, which was what fixed the separated timelines after the Time Heist. But, something must happen to this Tony, right? His life must go on.

He’s about to tell Tony as much, that he can’t do this, doesn’t want to mess with the space-time continuum. But Tony has a cocky smirk on his face. It says that he doesn’t think Peter will be able to do it. It’s ironically fitting that he’ll always feel the need to prove himself to this same man.

“Okay.” Peter doesn’t miss the surprised raise of Tony’s eyebrows. “Where do you want to start?”

“You. Why’d I bring _you_ into this?”

The inflection on _you_ is slightly offending. “Fight with Captain America—you needed more people on your side and you’d had an eye on me or something.”

Tony looks taken aback, but he recovers quickly. “So I made your suit right, and the webs?”

“I made the webs before I knew you,” Peter corrects, satisfied when Tony looks impressed.

“What year are you from, anyway. How soon do I die?”

Tony chuckles drily after he says it, but it makes Peter’s whole body stiffen. He messes with his hands a bit to try to calm himself.

“It's 2024, but it was about a year ago,” he whispers.

Tony purses his lips. “Didn’t you say you’re like ten now in 2012. No way you’re 21. Your math is way off, kid. You almost had me thinking you were smart.”

“I’m 16. But, my maths not wrong. It’s a long story.”

“Tell it.”

Peter sighs because Tony really is going to make him relive the whole damn thing. “Do you know anything about the infinity stones? The tesseract is one of them.”

Tony’s starting to look apprehensive, but he quickly covers it with a flashy grin. “I think the God of Thunder himself said something about them.”

“Well, there are five others. One is in Loki’s scepter. They’re, um, super powerful.”

Tony leans his head to the side to check his watch. “Yeah, I got that. Keep going.”

He’s really starting to piss Peter off. He was definitely even more infuriating when he was younger. Peter’s glad they met when they did.

“Okay, well, there’s this guy, um.” The name trips him up. It shouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve Peter’s fear. 

Tony notices and thankfully, takes pity on Peter. He waves for him to continue. “Name doesn’t matter, I’ll meet him soon enough.”

Peter wishes more than anything that he could stop that meeting. 

“He was collecting all the stones so that he could kill half the universe because of overpopulation. It was fucking dumb—he called it mercy.” The anger is creeping into Peter now, which is good, better than fear.

“There’s this other guy, Dr. Strange—that’s his real name, can you believe it? He had the time stone, but he cast a spell—“

“I’m sorry. Did you say spell?”

“Oh yeah. Forgot to mention, he’s a wizard.”

“What the hell.” Tony sounds tired, knowing that he’s going to have to deal with all of this at some point.

“I told you it’s a long story. Anyway, the bad guys kidnap the wizard because the spell won’t let them rip the stone off him and they take him onto their spaceship. You told me to go home but I didn’t listen—sorry—so then we’re in space. And I came up with this awesome plan to get rid of the guy who was torturing Dr. Strange. Then, we crash land on this planet—“

Peter looks up to see that Tony’s pupils are blown, his face three shades lighter than it should be.

“Um—Mr. Stark, are you—“

“The guy you won’t say the name of, he’s an alien? I die in space? Does he manage to kill half the world? Is that why you’re here? I knew we were outmatched.”

Tony’s definitely freaking out. Peter shouldn’t have told him anything, he knew it would be a mistake. 

“Yes, he’s an alien. But, no—“

Before Peter can finish, Tony’s stumbling out of the lab, clutching his chest. Peter follows on his heels.

“Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark?” The man in question is muttering things under his breath that Peter can’t quite make out. “Tony, are you okay?”

The hand on his arc reactor is making Peter nervous. “FRIDAY, is his heart okay? Wait, no, I mean JARVIS?”

The automated voice is calm, comforting. “His heart rate is elevated, but physically he is fine.”

Peter nods and crouches down next to where Tony has slumped on the floor with his eyes closed. He places a hand on his shoulder just for it to be shoved off.

“Tony, you’re okay, I shouldn’t have told you about it, I’m sorry.” Peter tries to keep his voice steady.

That causes Tony to open his eyes, he seems to be breathing a little less heavily. “I made—you tell me.”

Peter wracks his brain for other topics to distract Tony. “They reboot Star Wars In 2015. The first one was okay, nothing on the originals though. The main character’s a girl—which is great! For like, feminist reasons. She’s really cool. Her name’s Rey. She lived on a planet alone for a really long time and—“

“What are you doing?” Tony interrupts. “Stop talking about space.”

“Oops, sorry.”

Tony groans and massages his chest, then his head. “God, what the fuck was that?”

“I believe it was an anxiety attack, sir,” JARVIS supplies helpfully.

“Seriously?” Tony lets his head fall onto his knees.

Peter feels like he’s intruding on a moment he shouldn’t be seeing. It’s like looking back stage at all the actors getting their costumes on before the play starts. He remembers Happy telling him that Tony was a complete mess. He’d only half-believed it at the time.

As Tony starts to look more relaxed he also starts to look increasingly embarrassed. He has no need to be. Peter wants to lighten the awkward heavy feeling in the room.

“Mr. Stark, you seem pretty traumatized,” he parrots, trying to get the same inflection as Tony had earlier.

There’s a moment after when Peter thinks he made the wrong call. But, then Tony breathes out a laugh.

“Touché,” he says.

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

A few hours after the Incident (Tony refuses to call it an anxiety attack, no matter what his extremely intelligent AI says), Tony hears a soft thud behind him. He turns from the hologram in front of him to see that Peter has dozed off by the microscope. He had been analyzing the few Pym Particles that he has left.

It’s a good thing. The kid hasn’t had proper sleep since he’d landed himself back in time. Tony’s used to working without rest, but Peter probably isn’t. They’re going to need their combined brain power to solve this.

Tony turns down the music a bit so the heavy instruments won’t wake Peter up and continues working. 

“Hey, JARVIS,” Tony says quietly. 

“Hello, sir.”

“Do you think he’s telling truth—about everything?”

There’s a pause. Tony worries his lip as he waits for the response.

“I don’t see what reason he would have to lie, sir. He has nothing to gain from it.”

Tony sighs. “I thought the same. Hoped you’d see it differently.”

He gives Peter a long glance. The kid’s not bad. He’s smart, funny, has a little bit of a defiant streak. Tony can see why his future self chose him as a mentee.

He shouldn’t have pushed Peter to tell him what happened earlier—and not just because of the Incident. The kid was clearly uncomfortable and Tony kept egging him on. He should do better, until they fix the device, but he’s not sure if he knows how. He has exactly zero experience with kids. He doesn’t even feel like he ever truly was one. He was almost through with college when he was Peter’s age.

He works for about an hour longer before Peter startles awake.

“Shit, sorry,” he says, wiping a bit of dried drool from the side of his mouth.

Peter tries to go immediately back to work, but he just kind of stares at the materials in front of him, dazed.

“Go back to sleep,” Tony tells him. “Head up to your room, if you want.”

Peter shakes his head rapidly, but his eyelids droop. “I can’t let you work on my problem alone. And—I haven’t been able to sleep in the room anyway.”

“Then keep sleeping right there.”

Tony turns around to signify that was the final word. He expects some pushback but there’s only the soft music playing. After a few minutes of it, Tony turns back around to make sure the kid hasn’t started working again.

He hasn’t. He’s conked out, mouth wide open, neck twisted in a way that’ll leave him with a hell of a crick when he wakes up. Tony can’t help but smile at the sight.

Pepper doesn’t like the situation.

“You’re telling me that a teenager hacks JARVIS to call you, lies about who his is, has super-human abilities, claims he’s a time traveler who you’re close to in the future, and he’s asleep in your lab right now?”

“Pep, I really think he’s telling the truth. He knew things about the attack on New York before they happened.” She shoots him an unconvinced look. “C’mon, when have I been a bad judge of character?” 

“Oh, I don’t know, Obadiah?” 

And, ouch. That’s a low blow. It’s also accurate.

“Listen, Tony, if he knew things about the attack it’s probably because he was in on it!”

He can’t tell her that the main reason he believes Peter is because of his reaction after the attack. The kid’s proven to be too bad of a liar to fake his reaction to Tony’s fall. To explain the reaction, he’d have to explain the future as Peter knows it. He can’t burden Pepper with that. She’s already at her wit’s end with the whole nuke thing.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to come up with a response because Peter pads into the kitchen. His mouth forms an almost perfect circle when he sees Pepper. His eyes are puffy from his—Tony glances down at his watch—5 hour nap, not bad. They’re also a little red, Tony hopes it’s from exhaustion, not crying.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize Ms. Potts was here, er, hi!” His brow furrows and he hesitantly sticks out a hand towards her. “Nice to meet you?”

He looks towards Tony, silently asking if that was the right response, if he told Pepper the truth or not. Tony shakes his head, but it's too late, Pepper already starts to pounce.

“Funny, I was under the impression that you had met me before, well, future me.” She fixes Peter with a withering stare.

Peter swallows hard, eyes darting between Pepper and Tony. “Yes, I have, sorry, I didn’t know, ma’am, if Tony was going to tell you that or not.”

Pepper narrows her eyes. “Are you implying that Tony makes a habit of lying to me in the future?”

Peter pales. “Oh my god, no, no, no. That’s not what I meant, sorry Ms. Potts.”

Tony has to stop this because Pepper will push forever and Peter will keep apologizing for almost as long. “Did you need something, Pete?” 

The shortened name slips off his tongue before he realizes what he said. Peter looks as uncomfortable as Tony feels—at first Tony thinks it’s because of the nickname and he curses himself for using it. He should apologize for overstepping. His goal is not to be what the other guy was for Peter.

“It’s nothing, I’ll just leave you guys to talk, sorry.”

As he backs away, Tony realizes the kid’s hands are shaking. Somethings wrong. He doesn’t know if it’s the confrontation with Pepper or something else. In the spirit of doing better, he decides to ask.

“Kid, wait, what’s up?”

Peter’s face crumples. He crosses his arms over his stomach like he’s trying to hold himself together.

“It’s nothing. Just had a not-so-great dream, not a big deal,” he says, in a tone that suggest it really is a big deal. “Got a little nervous when you weren’t in the lab anymore.”

Tony grimaces. He can sympathize with the nightmare situation, but doesn’t know exactly how to provide comfort. He’s about to clap an awkward hand on Peter’s back and send him on his way, but Pepper steps forward instead.

“Oh, you poor thing.” She grabs his arm and leads him towards the kitchen area.

Tony had never thought of Pepper as motherly, but it’s definitely not a bad look on her. Tony follows behind as she rubs a comforting hand on Peter’s back before sitting him down.

“Tony, where’s that recipe? For the soup you made when I was sick a few months ago.”

“JARVIS, give it to her.”

Peter turns to Tony . “You cook? And I’ve been living off cereal and occasionally takeout since I got here?”

“For Pepper,” Tony clarifies. “I cook for Pepper.”

Cue the woman in question berating him in outrage for not providing a child with proper nutrition. 

After she gets the soup started, Tony goes up behind her, places his hands on her waist as she stirs.

“I told you so,” Tony whispers in her ear.

“He seems like a sweet kid.” She taps his cheek lightly. “Still don’t believe in time travel.”

“I like the mother look on you, maybe we’ll have to try for a kid of our own later,” Tony murmurs. “Still haven’t forgotten our plans from before.”

“Oh, you mean—“ Pepper leans in even closer and cups her hands around her mouth.

“Super hearing!” Peter suddenly blurts out. “Now seems like a good time to mention—enhanced senses, really great ears!”

Tony and Pepper leap apart. Peter’s face is aflame, cheeks burning. Pepper clears her throat and goes back to the soup. She shoots Tony an angry glare and he can pretty easily glean the meaning from it— _why didn’t you tell me he had super hearing?_

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

Peter doesn’t make the mistake of falling asleep again and Tony doesn’t try to make him. He’s not sure if it’s an oversight or if it’s a kindness. 

They make steady progress, the device is complete. But, they’re struggling with the Pym Particles. 

“Can’t we just find Hank Pym?” Peter asks.”He should be able to spare a few vials.”

They’ve tried everything, utilized every chemical, piece of equipment, resource that Tony has. Peter has a sinking feeling that they’re not going to be able to crack it.

The right side of Tony’s mouth twitches. “From what I understand, he’s super protective of those things. Wouldn’t let my old man have them, or anyone at SHIELD. No one was able to replicate them.”

“Probably smart because SHIELD’s basically HYDRA,” Peter mumbles.

“Speak up.”

“Nothing.”

Peter’s frustrated, to say the least. The table that he broke last time he got this tired and desperate is sitting off to the side, waiting to be replaced. Peter wants to dent another one. He clenches his fist, and then almost immediately shakes his head and unclenches it. He never used to get so angry about things, even when they were terrible. Peter hopes it’s just the substantial lack of sleep. He likes to think that the events of the last couple of years haven’t altered him into a person he doesn’t want to be. But he’d ordered a drone strike on Brad for god’s sake. 

He wants to go home. But, that won’t even solve his problems. The world he’s desperately trying to go back to will still know that he is Spider-Man and they’ll also think he’s some terrorist-murderer. Which might even become the truth if he keeps getting so angry at things. He’d already killed Mysterio. Or, maybe he hadn’t in light of the new developments, but he thought he had, which is pretty much the same thing.

His eyes start to fill against his will. It just makes him want to punch something more.

“Okay, we need a change of pace. We’ve been on this too long, need to do something else for a bit.” Tony’s eyes are on Peter. He wonders how long they’ve been there.

“May I suggest that this ‘something else’ be sleep, sir?” JARVIS interjects.

“You may suggest it, but it’s not gonna happen!” A bright grin settles itself on Tony’s face.

Tony seems to be getting more cheerful the less he sleeps. There’s a spring in his steps as he makes his way to the other end of the lab. Peter doesn’t get it. He follows behind Tony, dragging his feet.

“We should keep working, Mr. Stark.” He sounds so whiny.

“We are working, just not on that. Want to help me with Mark XI? You’ll love it.”

“Mr. Stark, the Pym particles are more important.” He stomps his foot as he says it, which really isn’t something he meant to do.

Tony quirks an eyebrow. “What are you going to do about it? Temper tantrum? Chill out.”

Peter opens his mouth to fire back, but instead lets it fall closed. He feels his energy deflate. His eyes are stinging so he quickly ducks his head.

Tony claps his hands. “Lets see ‘em, J.”

Peter looks up, confused, as the wall behind Tony slides open. The revealed space houses five suits. Peter scans over them in wonder.

“You like?” Tony points to a beat-up suit on the far left. “That’s the Mark VII, took a lot of damage from—well, you know. Fix it.”

Tony tosses Peter a wrench which he catches without looking away from the line of suits.

“I thought we were working on the Mark XI?” 

“Eh, changed my mind. I’m going to do the XI, you do the VII. Get to work. Direct any questions to JARVIS.”

There’s not really any arguing with Tony when he makes a decision. Not anything that will be successful. So, Peter gets to work. He feels a little shy, working on such an iconic suit, for a man that doesn’t even really know him. But, after about half an hour he gets lost in the work, even venturing to ask JARVIS questions out loud with Tony right there. The man never makes a snarky comment like Peter was afraid he might.

It’s calming to simply find problems in the suit and solve them. It’s just Peter, some metal, and a disembodied voice answering his questions. The physicality of it, the pieces he can shift and touch are a nice distraction from staring down a microscope at the tiny components of Pym Particles, and even more so from the bigger, abstract problems that await him back home. And he actually manages to fix it. Well, he thinks he does.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter holds out the Mark VII’s bracelets. “Do you want to test it?”

Tony looks up at Peter over the rims of his glasses. “Nah. Go for it.”

“What? Go for what?”

“Test it yourself. I’ll probably never use that one again, to be honest.”

Peter’s face scrunches up, landing somewhere between confused and annoyed. He just spent hours on something that will never be used and he doesn’t know what to make of that. But, he does want to know if his work was a success, so he slaps the bracelets on and summons the armor anyway. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. He snaps open the faceplate and can’t contain his excitement, a grin stretches over his face. 

“It works!”

“Yeah, it does,” Tony replies. “Nice job.”

Tony hadn't even looked up as he said it, but it still makes Peter want to pump a fist in the air and dance around. He tries to play it cool, but his smile grows impossibly wider. 

“Better?” Tony asks, still tweaking the Mark XI.

It takes Peter a second to realize what he’s talking about. When he does, he’s more than a little bit shocked. He didn’t expect this younger Tony to notice or care how he was feeling. He’d given no indication of anything like that until now.

He takes another second to think about the answer to the question. He’s no longer a compressed spring, threatening to be unleashed at any second.

“Um—yeah,” he says. “Better.”

“Back to the real work then.”

━━━━━━ ◦ ⎊ ◦ ━━━━━━

“If I’m not mistaken, that’s a goddamn Pym Particle.”

Tony’s holding up a scan they took of a confirmed Pym Particle when they first started working together and a scan that just finished running of their most recent attempt at replication. He can’t quite believe that they did it. He gestures for Peter to come closer.

“Check me, kid, am I seeing things?”

“Oh. My. God,” Peter replies, head swiveling back and forth between the two images. “Finally.”

Tony grins as Peter snatches the scans from him and starts jumping up and down.

“JARVIS, we did it! Oh, tell Ms. Potts we did it!” 

The kid’s excitement is contagious. Tony can’t help himself from holding up a hand in his direction. Peter high-fives it—a little harder than he should be able to. Tony shakes his stinging hand a little, but his smile doesn’t falter.

“Great work, sirs,” JARVIS says.

Tony can’t help but feel the curl of satisfaction in his stomach that he managed to do yet another task that Howard was unable to do. It feels good. But, he can focus on that once he gets Peter home. 

He’ll be sad to see the kid go, which is all kinds of strange and unexpected. Even stranger, he can’t wait to meet Peter from his own time. He feels like he’s coming in a leg up on that one. He’s learnt a lot over the past few weeks.

“It’s pretty late. Do you want to wait until tomorrow, so that you can gather all your things? Maybe shut your eyes for a few hours.” Tony adds the last part hesitantly—sleep has been a touchy subject.

The joy seeps off Peter’s face. “Oh.”

Oh? Tony grimaces. Sudden mood changes, which are already a staple of the teenage mind, have been alarmingly frequent. Stress and lack of sleep will do that to a person. He was hoping that the excitement of going home would outweigh any negative feelings about sleep, but of course he was wrong.

“I’ve—I’ve got to go somewhere,” Peter blurts and then shoots out of the lab.

Tony sits, stunned, for a second before he gets up as well. “Peter, wait.”

When he reaches the penthouse, Pepper is on the balcony, staring out at the city.

“Did he—“ Tony starts.

“That way.” She points toward Midtown.

“How could he change into his suit that fast,” Tony grumbles as he fiddles with the bracelets on his wrists.

“No suit,” Pepper says.

Right, because he’s about to leave this timeline, so his identity doesn’t matter. But it’ll give Tony a mess to clean up—thanks a lot, kid.

He takes off in the direction that Pepper pointed. “He’s gotta be going to Queens. Look for him, J.”

“Will do, sir.”

Tony finds him on a fire escape, outside of an apartment. He lands softly beside him.

“You know, your face is going to be plastered across Time Square within the hour,” Tony says. “Thank god it’s dark so they’ll mostly be blurry.

Peter flinches but doesn’t respond, just stares through the window in front of him. Tony follows his gaze. There’s a family inside, eating dinner. The boy at the table turns his head and even with glasses perched on his nose, it’s undeniably a miniature version of Peter.

“Your parents?” Tony guesses.

“Aunt and Uncle.”

Tony does not want to touch the implications of that. “You’ll get to talk to them soon, kiddo. The device will work.”

“My uncle’s dead,” Peter says flatly.

Tony cringes. Whoever qualified him a genius is wrong. Apparently, he can’t read a situation to save his life.

“Well, that happens,” he says lamely.

As soon as he hears it out loud, he realizes that it’s not the thing to say. He unconsciously shifts a little from Peter, expecting it to piss him off. He’d have every right to be mad. Tony should never try to go near emotional stuff. There are no old suits around for him to throw Peter at this time.

Instead, Peter remains frighteningly stoic. “Yeah, it does.”

But, when the kid turns to him, there’s a wild glint in his eyes. It’s not angry, more manic. Which is somehow worse.

“The future’s shit,” he says. “I’m staying.”

Peter never stops blindsiding Tony. He’d worked himself into a sleep-deprived stupor to get that device online and now he doesn’t even want to use it.

“Peter, what? I’m sorry about your uncle. But, you can’t—“

“It’s not just about my uncle! You don’t understand!”

“Then, enlighten me.”

They’re in a stand-off for a minute. Tony’s glad he hadn’t lifted off the mask. He doesn’t have to worry about his expression. Peter’s emotions are drawn like a map over his face. The kid swallows thickly.

“My uncle died because of me,” he starts. “Then, you died because of me. And I gave the AI you left me to the first guy who was nice to me—who turned out to be a _psychopath_ , by the way! So, I had to kill him, or I thought I did, I don’t know anymore. But I don’t kill people! That’s not me, but now it is. And now my aunt and girlfriend are going to be in danger because of me.”

“That’s a really narcissistic take on things,” Tony says. “And that’s coming from me.”

Now, Peter stares daggers at him. “What?”

“I’m just saying, not everything bad that happens is your fault. That’s not how it works. Nobody has that much sway.” 

As Tony says it, he realizes that it’s not bad advice—probably something that he needs to learn as well.

“My uncle was shot right in front of me! I already had my powers, I should have stopped it.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t sound like you were holding the gun.”

Peter’s face contorts as tears start to leak out of his eyes. 

“And before you continue like that—I’m a little foggy on the details of how exactly I die, because I lost it last time you tried to tell me—but not a thing you can think of would have changed what I did. No offense, kid, but I’m stubborn like that.”

Before Tony can delve into the next item on the list, Peter interjects.

“EDITH was my fault. There’s no way around it. I handed it straight over. And now, he—he told everyone my identity. It’s all over the place, everyone’s seen it. And he twisted the story! Everyone thinks I was behind all of the attacks in Europe. They think I’m a murderer. A—and if he is still alive, he can control anything people see. Oh, fuck, is this even real?”

Tony blinks as Peter starts scanning around worriedly. He doesn’t know what Peter is talking about but the situation sounds objectively Not Good. He wishes Pepper was here. She would know better than him how to deal with this. She’s in touch with her emotions—more so than Tony ever will be.

But, Peter didn’t come back here for Pepper. Or even for his dead uncle that’s no more than 15 feet away from them right now. He came back for Tony. Tony can try to be the person that he needs for the duration of their time together.

“C’mon, we can’t sit here where your family could turn their heads and see us at any moment.”

Peter takes a wary step away from Tony. “Answer the question. What’s something Mysterio couldn’t know?”

Tony almost laughs at the ridiculous name, but Peter’s skittish demeanor stops him. “I don’t know, kid. I don’t even know what you would know.”

Peter doesn’t move, his face completely blank like it was so often when he first got to the tower. Tony sighs and hoists him up the few feet to the roof of the building.

Once Tony sets him down, Peter starts inching away, warily. Tony can't stand it. “I promise this is real. I know that’s what your Mysterio man would say, too. But—hey! No way he would have a recording of me saying Mysterio. I’ve never said that before. Asparagus! Wildebeest! Han-fucking-Solo! I can say anything, try me.”

It’s not technically true, and Tony thinks they both know that. This Mysterio guy could have other ways of approximating his voice, stringing syllables together or using an impressionist, but Tony’s antics cause Peter’s lips to twitch just a bit. It’s the smallest smile Tony’s ever seen, but he’ll take what he can get.

“Look, kid, it will be alright. Nope, don’t talk, zip it and listen. Take it from someone whose face is literally always up there on the big screens. On a good day, about half the world is fully on my side. On a bad day, it’s way less than that. But, sticking your head out there, trying to do what you think is right, you’re always going to get people who don’t like it. Someone’s always going to twist your words or your actions in ways that you didn’t even think were possible. Occupational hazard. They’d do it with just Spidey too, the only difference is your real name being thrown into the mix.”

“But, I never wanted my name out there. I just wanted to help people.”

He’s so young and good. It’s breaking Tony’s heart. His first thought is to tell the kid how naive he is, but there’s something pure about it that he doesn’t want to break just yet. 

Instead, he asks, “What do you want to do?”

Peter tilts his head to the side to look at Tony.

“Do you want to clear your name or get rid of it completely?”

Peter looks shocked. From the short snippets Tony has gleaned about what happened, it sounds like everything went down fast. The kid probably hasn't had time to fully process any of it, let alone think about any options he has moving forward. He's quite literally taking one thing at a time. It's evident from the way he bolted when he realized that finishing their project meant it was time to leave. “I don’t—which should I do?” The trust is back in full force. If Tony said one way or the other, he has no doubt that Peter would do exactly that. 

“Which one do you want to do? You said you never wanted your name out there, so if you’re leaning towards that, just go to Pepper. Actually, either way go to Pepper. She’s used to spinning my _real_ scandals. She can deal with this.”

Peter doesn’t look like he believes him. 

“Pepper will know how to handle it. I promise. She’s the most capable person on the planet. I don’t know the whole situation, but the Pepper in your time will. She’s probably already fixing it. Did you talk to her?”

Peter shakes his head. He looks guiltily at the ground. “I just worked on getting to you.”

Tony doesn’t understand it—this kid’s absolute faith in him. He wants to tell Peter how misguided it is. Instead they fall into an uneasy silence. Tony almost fills it with a snide comment but refrains.

“Why did you tell everyone your identity?” Peter finally whispers.

Tony laughs drily. “I’ve been in the news my whole life. For more bad things than good. I didn’t make Iron Man for good press, but I thought—I got up there and I wanted to show them. I was just trying to prove people wrong—nothing noble or anything.”

Peter’s looking at him with an expression that Tony can’t read, so he keeps going.

“I can’t tell you if it was the right move or not, but I don’t regret it. Life has a funny way of working out the way it's meant to.”

Tony hadn’t known that he thought that, but it feels true. If he hadn’t been captured in Afghanistan, he never would have realized the damage his weapons were causing. He never would have made the suit, either. Nothing is perfect (Tony doesn’t think he deserves perfect, anyway), but there does seem to be some sort of logical progression to the way his life is playing out. Especially if what Peter says about the future is true. Flashes of the expanse of space and weaponized ships float to the surface of his mind. There’s a sort of cosmic justice to it—that he should give his life to protect the world from what he fears the most.

Peter interrupts his thoughts. “If this is how it’s meant to be, it kind of sucks.”

Tony huffs out a laugh that ends in a sigh. “I can’t argue with that.”

━━━━━━ ◦ 🕷 ◦ ━━━━━━

Tony flies Peter home. He doesn’t know when he started thinking of the tower as home, but he supposes he’s been here in the past for a little while now. And if he lets himself think about it, it’s not really the tower per se. 

Peter has moved around a lot in his life, never outside of Queens, but his apartment building and bedroom were always shifting when he was younger. His family had always been poor and landlords were always raising prices. He’d felt a little guilty about it because Ben and May had never expected the expense of a child. But the experience had taught him that his home wasn’t a place, but people. His address didn’t matter as long as his aunt and uncle were there.

Even with the metal surrounding them, Tony’s hands, gripping tightly under his shoulders, feel like that, too. Their conversation had made him feel a little better about his predicament back in his own time, but he still doesn’t know how to leave.

When they arrive at the tower, Peter plants himself on a couch in the penthouse. 

“No sleep, then?”

He shakes his head and Tony sits next to him. Tony flicks a movie on, but he doesn’t pay attention to it. Tony doesn’t seem to either. When Peter chances glances towards the man, he’s always looking out the window instead of at the screen in front of them. 

Peter can’t believe how much as changed in the month and a half that he has been here. There is no way the Tony he had called on that first day would have sat with him through the night when there was no project to work on. If he wasn’t aware of how ridiculous it'd sound, he would say that Tony doesn’t want Peter to leave either.

“How long until I meet you?” Tony suddenly asks, just as the first tendrils of light are starting to sneak over the skyline.

“2016.” 

“Oh, good. I get a four-year break from your ugly mug.” There’s no bite to it.

Peter doesn’t mention the five year one soon after that. Something in Tony’s voice confirms his suspicions that the man will miss him. Maybe, no matter where or when or how they meet, Tony will care at least a little bit about Peter.

There are so many things that Peter wants to say—that he wants to tell Tony, about the future, about the past. He keeps coming back to Morgan, but he doesn’t know for sure that this Tony’s future will go down the same way. And Tony hadn’t reacted well when Peter tried to tell him future events before. He wants to explain to Tony how thankful he is for everything that he had done for him, and everything that he hadn’t (because in the end that was just as important). But, none of that has happened yet for the man sitting next to him.

Peter settles for something that has. “I was at Stark Expo.”

Tony tears his gaze away from the sky to look at Peter. He doesn’t say anything, just waits for Peter to continue.

Peter had never told Tony this. He’d always meant to, but for some reason he felt embarrassed about it. Now he regrets it.

“I was the little boy with the Iron Man mask,” Peter says. “I don’t know if you remember, but one of the bots—”

“Nice work kid,” Tony mutters. “That was you?”

Peter ducks his head in a nod. He still feels awkward about it. He was a stupid kid who almost got himself killed.

“Wow.”

Pepper finds them in the same position on the couch when she comes out of her room. She kisses Tony’s cheek and places a lingering hand on Peter’s head, before drifting towards the kitchen. 

“Go get your things together,” Tony says, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

There’s nothing to say to that, so Peter gets up and heads to his guest room. It doesn’t exactly look like it’s meant for guests anymore. Either Tony or Pepper had placed a duffel-bag on the bed for him to fill—he’s accumulated too many things to fit in just his backpack. There are clothes strewn about that Pepper had express shipped so that Peter wouldn’t have to live in her and Tony’s old clothes while he was here. There’s a stack of DVDs with a few books and video games on the desk that Tony had bought for him (as if Peter would have stopped working on the device long enough to enjoy any of them). There’s even a note pinned to the wall from Natasha Romanoff. It had been on the desk one day when he had come up from the lab. It’s a sweet letter about his strength and determination in the battle, so unlike everything he’d ever heard about the notorious Black Widow. It makes him wish that he had met her in his timeline.

He begins shoving things into the bag, desperately trying to swallow down the lump in his throat. He eventually reaches one of the piles of clothes and fishes the MIT sweatshirt that he had stolen on his first night here. He hesitates, and then tucks it into the bag as well. 

“Mr. Parker?” JARVIS’ voice fills the room.

The voice is automated, but it's somehow warm. Peter wonders for the umpteenth time how Tony managed to create such human robots and AIs. He feels like there’s something there, some commentary on who Tony is as a person, but if he thinks about it too hard he might cry.

“Hi, JARVIS.” 

“I knew who you were,” JARVIS says. “When you called after you first arrived.”

Peter’s eyebrows furrow. There’s no way that the AI could have known he was from the future. 

“You mean, you knew I was Peter Parker? But it didn’t make sense because the Peter Parker here is younger? Something like that?”

“Not exactly, sir,” JARVIS replies. “I don’t understand time travel completely yet, only as much as Mr. Stark does, although I’m sure he will be an expert on it soon enough.”

Peter laughs, a little sadly. “Yeah, I bet he will.”

“When your phone number crossed my databases, I recognized it. I am uncertain how, but there was corrupted data around it. I couldn’t access most of it, but I uncovered that you were an enhanced individual, a boy. I also knew that you were not a threat and that you were important to Sir. It’s why I kept letting your calls through.”

Peter gapes at nothing. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I thought it would be beneficial to stay out of it.”

Peter almost protests because maybe Tony wouldn’t have kicked him out or been so cold to him for most of his short time here if he had known. But, he realizes that JARVIS is probably right.

They’d had to start at the beginning. Even farther back than they had originally started. It hurt a lot, especially when Peter first got here, but it was also nice to have a do-over. He had learned things about Tony that he never would have otherwise if JARVIS had told him from the beginning.

“During your time here, I’ve been working on accessing as much of the corrupted data as possible. I think that it is important that you know that Mr. Stark from your time cared about you very much like a son, Mr. Parker. And my Sir will miss you immensely.” 

Peter doesn’t trust himself to speak. He wants to ask JARVIS if he can see the information that he found, but it’s probably an invasion of privacy. He just nods.

“But, neither one would want you to stay here. No matter what you decide to do with Spider-man, they would want you to live in your own time. They’d want you build a better future than they could imagine.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” Peter mumbles.

“It doesn’t have to be for the whole world, Mr. Parker. Just a happy future for yourself.”

Peter gulps and struggles through a few shaky breathes. He feels like a weight has been lifted, yet somehow a different one has been added. 

“Did he really think he could never be happy?”

“I believe there were many moments when Sir was happy,” JARVIS answers. “He just never thought it could last.”

Peter can’t hold it back anymore. He closes his eyes as tears start to stream out of the corners.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t say this to upset you. Although you caused him much stress, you were one of the things that made Sir very happy.”

Peter smiles a little despite his sniffling. “Thanks, JARVIS.”

Peter carries his duffle and backpack to the main room of the penthouse. He’s wearing the quantum suit. Tony’s in the same position that Peter left him, but now with Pepper tucked into his side. When Tony makes eye contact with Peter, a sharp pang travels through him and settles deep in his stomach.

“Ready?” Tony asks.

Peter shrugs. He doesn’t think that 'ready' is the right word, but he does want to see May. And JARVIS was right. He doesn’t know if he deserves the opportunity to live the full life that Tony never thought he could, but he owes it to a lot of people to try his best.

The three of them trudge down to the lab, each step seems to drag, impossibly heavy. Tony picks up the device they created and straps it onto Peter’s hand.

“I put the settings to 2024, but if you’re still planning to go visit another me, you can change it. That’s your choice.”

Tony’s face is unreadable, but Pepper looks like she definitely does not approve of that option. It doesn’t matter because Peter’s not going to do it.

“I think I actually got what I needed here.” Peter looks at Tony as he says it.

Tony freezes. His lips twitch a bit before he controls his expression into a picture of disinterest. 

Pepper isn’t so guarded. She grins and then pulls Peter into a hug. “Have a safe trip, Peter. It was nice to meet you a little early.”

So, she had come to believe him after all. Peter squeezes her back. “Thank you.”

Pepper releases him and leaves the room with a wave and a pointed look at Tony that makes Peter nervous. 

“One more thing.” Tony does a half jog to the other side of the lab and then returns with an object in his hand. It looks like a StarkPhone. 

He holds it out to Peter, looking Tony Stark’s version of hesitant. “I made this. You can say no. It would piss me off, but you’re leaving anyway, so you wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

Peter accepts the phone and twists it around in his hand. “What is it?”

“It hasn’t been tested, so no promises that it works.”

“Everything you make works, Mr. Stark,” Peter says.

“Well, duh,” Tony laughs.

The room lapses into heavy silence. Peter doesn’t want to ask again, though he has some suspicions about what the device might do. He fiddles with it a little as he waits for Tony to continue.

“It’s for emergencies,” Tony says, voice rushed. “It’s meant to work across timelines, so you can let me know that you got back okay.”

“Will it always call you in the moment I leave? Or if I call you in a week will it call you a week from now, too?”

“There are settings. You can choose whenever, kid. It’s probably not super healthy to call me a lot. But, if you ever wanted to, I’ll be here.” Tony must see the longing in Peter’s eyes because he quickly adds, “If you do it too much, I’ll stop answering.”

“Then I’d just call you at an earlier time,” Peter retorts.

“I’m serious, Pete. It’s cliche, but you’ve got to live in the moment.”

His thoughts drift back to what JARVIS said earlier. “Yeah, I know.” 

The silence takes over the room again. Peter’s definitely not going to make the final call to leave. Tony doesn’t seem to want to either.

“So, before you go, any advice? Damn, it’s weird that a child is the wise sage who knows what could happen. Anything I should do differently when mentoring a spider-kid?”

Peter shifts a little in place, crossing his arms, shoulders inward. The Peter here has some of the best and worst moments of his life ahead of him. He doesn’t know whether to be jealous or to pity him. He settles for jealous, because this timeline could end up differently. He hopes it does, but he doesn’t know if he’ll ever find out. Peter will stick to calling Tony before 2023. If it does happen, he can’t deal with that loss again.

“I don’t know. I guess just try to stay alive for this Peter and Pepper and—” He bites back Morgan’s name. He still doesn’t think he should go there. “Everyone.”

It’s kind of a joke, but not exactly. Tony presses on a fake smile and shines it at Peter.

“I’ll do my best. But remember what I said about things happening for a reason?”

Peter hates that logic. There are senseless acts of violence everyday, natural disasters, premature deaths. There doesn’t seem to be any type of controlling force at all. He doesn’t understand why Tony seems to be clinging to that. 

“Besides, Peter doesn’t need me,” Tony continues.

Peter knows that he’s not just talking about the one that Tony hasn’t met yet. He lowers his head quickly in a jerky nod. Just maybe, he can start to accept that.

Peter wracks his brain for any other piece of advice. An idea blooms and grows before he can quash it down. It’s not guaranteed to change the future in this timeline, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try.

“Also, sit Quill out,” Peter says.

“What does that mean?”

Peter doesn’t think he should reveal too much. “If it all goes down the same way, you’ll figure it out. Quill means well, but just—get him away from the action, alright?”

Tony purses his lips. It’s obvious that he knows exactly what Peter is trying to do. Peter just hopes that he won’t be mad about it. He had told Peter he didn’t want to know anymore about the future. Thankfully, he lets it go.

“Okay, bring it in.” Tony looks away and quirks his mouth to the side as he holds his arms out.

Peter scoffs, glances back and forth between Tony’s outstretched hands with exaggerated suspicion.

“Okay, you made me wait. I’m rescinding the offer,” Tony sniffs, snapping his arms back to his sides.

“Wait no, Mr. Stark! I was kidding.” 

“Jesus, the new you _will_ call me Tony. I know you can, I've heard it.” Tony crosses his arms. “And also, no, you lost your chance.”

Peter launches himself at Tony anyway. He wraps his arms tight around him and squeezes. It takes a lot of control to keep his strength from becoming crushing. After a few moments, Tony pries his arms out from under Peter’s embrace and hugs back. Peter is crying, again, but he thinks they’re at least half from happiness—it’s bittersweet. When Tony starts to pull away, Peter reluctantly lets go.

“Just so you know, that only happened because I’m never going to see you again,” Tony says. “So, if you pull a repeat of this stunt and come back here, I will end you.”

“Understood.” Peter grins, and it doesn’t feel that fake.

“On with it then, get out of here.”

Peter’s hand hesitates over the button. 

“Thank you, Tony,” he says, wishing that he could stop his voice from shaking. “You deserve every piece of happiness you come by.”

The last thing he sees before he’s sucked through the quantum realm is the misty glint in Tony’s eyes.

He emerges, gasping, in front of the former Stark Tower. He takes in the familiar construction on the building, and subsequently doubles over. For a few precarious minutes, he’s afraid that he will throw up, but the feeling passes, leaving him empty.

Peter straightens out and surveys the street. Passerby’s are giving him a wide berth and gawking at him. It makes sense. He’s standing there in a quantum suit with two large bags after all. He goes behind a sign and clicks the suit off, so at least he’s in civilian clothes. Now all he has to worry about is his recently turned recognizable face. 

He lingers behind the sign and grapples in his bag for the new phone Tony had given him. When he powers it on, block letters fill the screen.

 _Enter date._

Peter types in the date that he left Tony on and when prompted again, the time a few minutes after he pressed the button.

He sucks on his lip as he waits for the call to connect.

“You made it?”

Peter’s cheeks stretch wide. “Yeah ‘m here.”

“Great,” Tony says. “Remember, talk to Pepper about your problem. Don’t call me for at least a month. I can see what date you’re calling me from, so don’t even try to pull one over on me.”

“I would never.”

“I swear Parker, if you use this as a crutch, I will come and take it away from you. I have time travel cracked, now.”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Peter hopes that it's true. He doesn’t want to hang up.

“Also,” Tony hesitates.

Peter fumbles to check the settings of the phone. He's suddenly acutely aware that if he breaks this one, he’ll never be able to talk to Tony again.

“If Pepper or Rhodey or anyone wants to talk to me—I don’t know, maybe that’s a bad idea—“

“I’ll let them know,” Peter interrupts. 

It wouldn’t be fair to keep this to himself. There are people who knew Tony for far longer than Peter had.

“Thanks, kid. Now skedaddle, I’ll talk to you when I talk to you.”

May goes with him to see Pepper. She flips off the reporters that now often sit in front of their apartment building as she ushers Peter past them into Happy’s waiting car. Happy frowns at them through the rearview mirror. 

“They’re brutal,” Happy says. “You should have waited for me to get out, I could have made a path.”

“I had it covered,” May replies.

Her words are a little sharp. It’s been awkward between them since they realized they weren’t on the same page about their relationship. Not to mention how pissed May has been with the world since Mysterio’s video came out. Peter leans on her shoulder for the entirety of the car ride.

Pepper is as lovely as ever. She beckons May and Peter into the house like old friends, even though they’ve met very few times before.

“She makes it easier,” Peter hears her tell May, nodding towards where Morgan is building with legos. “It’s good to have to focus on taking care of someone else.”

“I get that.” He can feel May watching him as she says it.

Peter closes his eyes. The images of Ben and May and the little version of himself at the dinner table is permanently etched into his mind.

“Peter?” 

The voice startles him. Pepper is kneeling right in front of him. He wonders how long he’d sat there replaying the scene in his head over and over. Outside on the porch, May is holding Morgan and pointing at something on the lake.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It’s okay.” Pepper’s smile is kind and patient. “You wanted to talk about Beck, right?”

He flinches at the name, pushes down the panic that this is yet another elaborate hoax.

“Um—yes. He was behind the attacks. I made a mistake and gave him EDITH.” He fiddles with the glasses that are hanging from the collar of his shirt. “I got them back and stopped him, but now it’s a whole mess.”

“It’s not your fault, Peter,” Pepper says. “I saw his video. There’s obvious editing in it. We’ll fix this.”

Peter fights the urge to explain how much of his fault it was. He focuses on what Tony said, because the man was right. Peter’s hand wasn’t on the gun or in the gauntlet and the glasses weren’t perched on his nose when the drones attacked London. He’d been tricked and he would learn from it, but he can't blame himself anymore.

“They showed my face. Everyone knows who I am.”

Pepper studies him. “I can make that go away, disprove that it’s you.”

It’s tempting, so very tempting, to take her up on that offer. But, he thinks that some of the damage is permanent. His classmates who were in Europe will always be suspicious, as will the Daily Bugle. The ridiculous website has been running smear campaigns against him since they dropped the video.

“No,” he says. “If I hide again, someone else can just use it against me later.”

Pepper nods. It seems like approval of his decision. He’s grateful for it, but he doesn’t think that there is truly a correct answer. Both choices have their downfalls.

“How can I make sure that May and my friends are safe?”

Pepper brings up a screen with security measures that she had already started to implement before Peter had even come to her. She’s upped security at Midtown High by donating the newest Stark surveillance systems. There’s also a list of possible apartments for May in more reclusive areas. 

Peter relaxes into the couch for the first time since he got to the cabin. Tony was right. Pepper can handle this.

Peter tells Colonel Rhodes about the phone first. EDITH gives him his number. The call drops immediately after Peter finishes explaining.

Peter thinks he knows why, so he climbs up onto the roof of May's _new_ new apartment and lays down. He’s proven correct when the War Machine suit lands next to him twenty minutes later. 

“So you have the tracker in my suit, too,” Peter says as he stands.

“Happy thought I should have it. Tony would have wanted it too, I think.” Rhodey flips up the face-plate and fixes Peter with a calculating squint. “You better not be messing with me.”

“I’m not,” he says, holding out the phone.

Rhodey reaches for it slowly like he’s afraid it will shock him. Peter tells him the date to put in—a few days after Peter left. He holds the phone to his ear with a haunted expression.

Peter hears when Tony picks up. “Parker, I told you to wait for at least a month. Your world better literally be on fire for you to be calling me.”

Rhodey’s mouth falls open, and he drifts towards the other side of the roof in silence. Peter watches nervously. He knows that it’s bound to be a lot to process.

“Fuck you, man. We made a pact that specifically involved not dying,” Rhodey says after a few seconds. 

“Rhodey?”

“God, it’s good to hear your voice.”

Peter smiles and crawls back to his window.

That was the only time that Rhodey used the phone.

“I said everything that I needed to,” he tells Peter.

Peter’s glad that Rhodey found that kind of peace, but he doesn’t understand it. He can think of endless amounts of things that he wants to say to Tony and he’s sure that there will just be more and more as time goes on.

Pepper declines speaking to him. “It’s too much. Maybe one day, but not right now.”

It was the least composed that Peter had ever seen her look. Her hands shook almost violently as she pushed the phone back towards him, so he’d quickly pocketed it and changed the subject.

Happy calls Tony occasionally. When Peter first told him, he did it three weeks in a row, but Tony must have set limits like he had for Peter, because he starts only asking Peter for the phone on the last day of every month.

Peter waits more than a month to call again, mostly to prove that he can. He decides to do it on Christmas. Him and May had opened presents in the morning and they’re set to leave for the Stark’s cabin in about an hour to have dinner with Pepper and Morgan. May’s taking a nap by the tree.

He goes to the roof so that he doesn’t disturb May, and also because she doesn’t approve of the phone situation. She thinks it will ‘hinder his development and implant an unhealthy understanding of grief and coping mechanisms’. He's pretty sure she got those words from a professional. But, she hasn’t taken it away from him, yet, and he'd like to keep it that way.

Peter doesn’t think it has to be unhealthy if he uses it right. After Ben, May had taken him to a therapist. She’d suggested writing letters to Ben in a journal. Peter doesn’t see how this is any different, except that Tony answers back.

He sets the date to Christmas 2012.

“Did you really go six months? Or were you calling me in a different year?” Tony sounds out of breath.

Peter laughs. “Merry Christmas to you too, Mr. Stark.”

“Merry Christmas, kid,” he replies. “Now, answer the question.”

Peter does, and he’s proud that it’s the truth. Tony doesn’t immediately answer. Peter hears repulsors in the background.

“Sorry, kid, I’m a little busy right now,” Tony says. Peter can barely make out his words over all of the commotion that must be around him. “I assume that I survive this, based on your version of the future. So, try a different Christmas, maybe?”

Right, he had forgotten that the Extemis incident had happened over the holidays. He switches the date to Christmas 2013 and then hesitates. He must be a bit of a masochist because he changes it to 2018.

His hands tremble slightly as he confirms the date and time and continue to do so as he holds the phone to his ear.

“Merry Christmas, Peter.” Tony’s voice sends a chill through him. He can’t read the tone.

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Stark.”

“This is one of your earliest calls, huh? I wondered when it would happen.”

Peter’s vibrating. He just wants to get it over with, ask if the snap happened, but he doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up. It's easier to talk about less important things.

“Do I call a lot?” he asks.

“Not as much as I thought you would.”

For some reason it makes Peter feel guilty. “Oh, sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a good thing,” he replies. “But you know, you kept some things from me about the future for a long time, I didn’t think you—“

Tony cuts off and another voice, farther away leaves the speaker. 

“Tony! Pepper told me to tell you that you’re not allowed in your lab on Christmas! She said I have her permission to pick you up and bring you out of here if you don’t listen. Don’t get mad at me though, I’m just the messenger—and the brawn, I guess.”

It takes Peter a long time to recognize his own voice and when he does, it's like a hand has wrapped itself around his heart.

Tony laughs. “If you ever try to lift me, I will end you. Tell Pepper I just have to finish one phone call. If she doesn’t like that, tell her it’s an old friend of ours.”

There’s a pause before Tony speaks again. “Sorry about that.”

“Was that—?”

“Yeah.”

Peter’s throat tightens and there’s a pressure behind his eyes that he viciously tries to ignore.

“You okay?” Tony asks.

He doesn’t know yet. He doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions.

“You stopped him?”

“Sidelined Quill, just like you said. Sent him on a wild goose chase to the other side of Titan.”

Peter slumps down against the roof. It had been that easy, just as Peter had hoped—but also feared. He’d been so close to getting the gauntlet off. If he could have just distracted Quill somehow in his own timeline—but it doesn’t matter now. It’s Peter’s past. He shoves the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“I’m going to need some confirmation on the ‘okay’ thing.”

“I’m good,” Peter whispers. “I’m—happy that it worked.”

And he is, he really _really_ is. But he’s also so many other things.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Tony says. 

Peter nods even though Tony can’t see it. It’s complicated and it’s messy and it’s confusing. He wants to scream because it’s unfair and he wants to sing because this Tony won’t die on that same battlefield.

“Does your Peter know about me?”

“No.” The ‘and he never will’ goes unsaid. “But, you were ‘my Peter’ first, you know.”

Peter supposes that’s true. A small smile tugs at his lips. He tucks the fact away with all of the other things he doesn’t exactly know how to feel about.

“You never told me that Pepper and I have a kid,” Tony says. “Pepper’s pregnant. Or is that different here, too?”

Peter gulps. “That’s the same.”

“Damn.” There’s a long silence and Peter feels the threat of tears again. “Didn’t think you had it in you to keep a secret, Parker! Your lying was awful.”

It surprises a laugh out of Peter. “Well, you didn’t believe me when I was telling the truth about time travel, so my lying couldn’t have been that bad.”

“You might have a point there. _Might_ ,” Tony’s voice becomes more solemn. “Now, don’t give away anything about the baby, but if they ever want to use your phone—when they’re older—would you let them borrow it?”

“Of course.” 

Peter hears the slightest sniffling from the other end of the call. It makes him feel like he’s being ripped in two. Tony shouldn't have to worry about this alternate set of people that he cares about. It takes a few more seconds, but when Tony does speak, there’s no trace that he’d been crying. Peter almost convinces himself that the sound had just been some kind of inter-timeline static. 

They talk about a lot of things. Peter recounts what has happened in the six months since he’d gone to the past—how Pepper has taken control of the Mysterio situation and how the public is mostly accepting her story over Beck’s. Tony’s definitely heard it before, from older versions of Peter who called younger versions of Tony, but he lets him continue without interruption. Tony tells Peter about his semi-retirement. He spends most days with Pepper, preparing for the baby, but goes into Stark R&D a few times a week. Pepper's planning on going back to her position as CEO when she's done with maternity leave. Tony will cut his hours even more to stay with the baby. He only dons a suit when a certain spider-themed hero gets in a tricky situation, which happens less and less.

“I don’t think I’ve had to rescue his scrawny ass in—I don’t know, at least 4 months? He’s very capable. I shouldn’t be surprised, your debut in 2012 was impressive.”

Peter practically glows under the praise. A part of him will always be the same kid, trying to impress the great Tony Stark. “Does everyone think it was the same person, from back in 2012?”

“The public either thinks it’s the same or a copy-cat. Peter thinks I designed him a similar suit to pay homage to the old guy. He thinks you died or something. He showed me some conspiracy video on—Buzzfeed? I think—to try to get me to tell him what really happened.”

Peter gapes. “I’m on Buzzfeed Unsolved? No way! That’s awesome, man.”

“Of course you know what that is.”

They discuss the different theories proposed for a few minutes. Some people think that Spider-Man is just a suit made by Tony, with only a friendly AI inside. Others think that it’s not a suit at all and truly a red and blue alien, who was off-world between 2012 and 2016.

Peter checks the time. There are only 15 minutes until him and May are supposed to leave.

“I’m going to have to go soon,” Peter says. “May and I are going to Pepper’s.”

“That’s great, Pete.” It sounds like he’s smiling. “Wish everyone a Merry Christmas for me. If you think they’d want that.”

Peter doesn’t know if everyone would, especially Pepper, but he tells Tony that he’ll do it anyway. He’ll tell Rhodey and Happy at least.

“Mr. Stark,” he starts. 

Tony doesn’t say anything when he pauses, which Peter is grateful for. He doesn’t know if he’d continue if the man commented. 

“Are you happy?”

It’s Peter’s turn to wait for an answer. He prepares himself for Tony to answer sarcastically or to evade the question. It's definitely what 2012 Tony would have done. He probably would have gotten a similar response from his timeline's Tony before the snap.

“I am. Sometimes it scares me how much.” He says it fast, like he’s confessing some big secret. 

Peter grins up at the New York skyline. He thinks about what JARVIS told him before he left and feels like finally, he did something right, all by himself. He changed the course of this Tony’s life for the better.

“How about you, Pete?”

The grin starts to fall a little, but he resolutely forces it back into place. 

“I’m happier than I was,” he muses. “And I think it’ll keep getting better.”

“I know it will.”

He doesn’t know if Tony’s talking from personal experience or if he literally knows what will happen from talking to older versions of Peter. Either way, he believes it. He’s hanging dangerously on the precipice of tears, once again, but they’re not the bad kind.

“I love you, kid.”

It pushes him over the edge. He knows that a lot of what Tony feels for him can be credited to a different Peter. But if even a fraction of it is actually for him, he’ll take it. It’s more than he ever thought he’d get.

“I love you, too.”

Peter doesn’t call that often. He starts to understand why Rhodey only called once, not completely, but to an extent. 

Peter has people—May, Ned, MJ, Pepper, the list is long, longer than he thought it would be. And most importantly, he has himself. He grows up with his identity known, his actions often criticized, but he learns to take the advice that he agrees with and trust his instincts on the rest. Because it turns out that he doesn’t do everything wrong, after all. In fact, there’s quite a bit that he does right.

Tony was right. Peter doesn’t need him.

But, it’s nice to know that there’s a world where everything worked out a little differently. Where there’s a Tony that’s happy and safe and a Peter that grows up with that relationship. And it’s nice to visit it sometimes, through brief calls on windy rooftops.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> I probably butchered the MCU's time travel rules, but do they really make sense anyway?
> 
> I'd love for you to check out my other [works!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomlinope/works)
> 
> Here's my [tumblr!](https://peterparkrr.tumblr.com)


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